Which Company Would You Rather Be Less Associated With? File Sharing Or Adware?

from the choices,-choices... dept

A few days ago, Claria (still rumored to be in buyout talks with Microsoft) made some news for dropping out of its agreement to be distributed with the popular Kazaa file sharing app. Plenty of people speculated that this had to do with the Supreme Court’s Grokster decision — saying that Claria didn’t want to be associated with that. Of course, knowing how sad it must look to have your adware company fire you, Kazaa has struck back with a “you can’t quit, you’re fired!” type of response, as accurately described by John Borland. Honestly, it’s not clear what good it does for Kazaa to bitch about Claria ditching them at this point. Still, it’s a bit amusing to see both companies trying to distance themselves from each other, as if trying to figure out which one is less liked by the investment community these days.


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Comments on “Which Company Would You Rather Be Less Associated With? File Sharing Or Adware?”

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3 Comments
Ben Edelman (user link) says:

But Kazaa Still Installs Claria, Still Screws Up L

Claria may have fired Kazaa, and/or vice versa. But when users download and install Kazaa, they still do receive Claria.

Also, 7+ months after I first reported that Kazaa’s display of Claria’s license lacked line breaks after its section headings, that problem is still in effect. And while Kazaa prominently mentions Claria’s advertising, it doesn’t prominently disclose any effects on users’ privacy. All in all, it’s screwed up. When users get Claria through the bundle with Kazaa, we can’t reasonably say they provide informed consent.

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