On Thursday, Google rolled out an update to its personalized home page service, iGoogle. Among other UI updates, the major new features were increased flexibility in what “gadgets”, the personalized “chunks” that make up an iGoogle start page, can do. This, in turn, allows developers much more freedom with what they can provide to the user through an iGoogle gadget.

Previously, gadgets could only occupy a small box that took up only a third of the screen. While this was okay for reading headlines or perhaps glancing at stock prices, it limited the usefulness of gadgets and the information that could be provided. For more detail, users would often have to click a link in the gadget that would take them away from iGoogle. While this is perhaps the proper use of a “start page”, Google may now see things differently.

Life is a great big canvas

Gadgets now offer a near full-size “canvas” mode, where the gadget is expanded to take up most of the screen. This allows more information to be displayed and makes the iGoogle page less of a start page and more of an aggregator - like an RSS reader, but with much more.

Speaking of RSS readers, any RSS feeds on iGoogle can now be expanded into a full-feed view, using a layout/interface not unlike that of Google Reader, their specialized RSS reader product. All of these enhancements are designed to help you get the information you want, without having to leave iGoogle.

Some good examples of gadgets taking full advantage of the new functionality offered by the new iGoogle include the GasBuddy gadget, which display a small labeled map of local gas prices in the “mini” mode, which expands to a fully-searchable map complete with a clickable legend in the full-screen canvas mode.

Google’s own products, such as the Gmail and Google Calendar gadgets, have also been updated to nicely take advantage of the new abilities. In canvas mode, each gadget expands to fill the screen with pretty much the same UI as their respective web applications. This makes accessing your various Google Account services easier and decreases load times.

Content and Money

Others include the Wall Street Journal’s gadget, which in canvas mode looks similar to a start page of its own. Interestingly, ads are shown in this mode, presumably from the WSJ itself. This highlights another important aspect of gadget development: Income.

This is really the crux of the iGoogle update, in my opinion. By allowing giving more power to developers and allowing more content to be shown on iGoogle, developers can have more flexibility with their creations. In return, Google is apparently willing to allow them to show ads so they can make money off of their creations, which clearly add value to iGoogle.

It’s hardly an original idea. Facebook has had their own applications platform for well over a year, with much of the same ideas. Facebook Apps are made by third party developers, and mostly run “within” the confines of the main Facebook site, keeping users on the site. In return, developers can also choose to run ads in their application to generate revenue. It’s a very similar model. (Facebook recently awarded some of the best apps through their fbFund initiative, with the promise of more money to come - perhaps Google will do the same? They’ve already done something similar with Android in order to spurn development)

Not so fast

Unfortunately, the changes were not all good. For one thing, the vast majority of existing gadgets haven’t been rewritten to take advantage of the full canvas mode. In all likelihood, many will not, since third party developers may do as they like. Gadgets that haven’t been updated will merely be displayed besides a huge “You might also like…” list of recommended/related gadgets when displayed in full-screen canvas mode.

Furthermore, some users have complained about the UI updates. In particular, the mandatory left sidebar now in place has caused some to lament the loss in screen real-estate. Previously, tabs were only shown on top if you had defined more than one; now the list of tabs, along with the iGoogle gadgets in each one, are shown in the sidebar no matter what.

Indeed, such a display might be superfluous if there’s only one tab. At the very least, Google should have allowed the sidebar to be collapsed or tucked away. (I won’t be surprised if they implement this change in the next few days, or already have it planned)

Also surprising is how Google rolled out the new version so suddenly, effectively forcing all users to adopt it. A better approach would have been to roll out a “beta” version (we all know how much Google is in love with beta) and allow users to preview it and optionally switch. This would allow them to get more feedback before switching everyone over, like Facebook did with their new redesign, which effectively took months to take effect.

However, given that iGoogle’s user base is likely a very small percentage of all the users who have Google as their start page (with most just preferring the stripped-down original search page as their starting point), perhaps Google believed that rolling out the updated site would affect so few that a beta period wasn’t really needed. In any event, the changes are not so ground breaking to warrant serious concern.

You knew it was coming, but perhaps just never figured that it would take this long. Just about a year after Google bought YouTube, it has announced plans to integrate AdSense with the popular video site. Many analysts questioned Google’s acquisition of YouTube, since at the time they were not yet profitable. However, with Google’s large cash reserves, they could afford to buy the dominant video-sharing site (after failing to take over the market with their own offering) and let it incubate while thinking up a game plan.

Killer Ads?

The ads won’t be forced onto the beginning of videos as some had feared, nor will they be tacked onto the end where most probably won’t bother to watch. Instead, select videos will be available to AdSense publishers to have ads placed alongside the videos. From the official Google AdSense blog, it appears that both banner ads and the text-ads that Google popularized will be available, and both will be integrated into the flash content with the YouTube video.

This is a fairly significant move by Google, and though they’ve experimented with ads, they have don’t anything close to this scale with respect to video. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on viewership levels. YouTube is a widely-accessed website, and its users are more representative of the average Internet user. This contrasts with a site like Digg, which is dominated by enthusiasts who have significant disdain for online advertising. Thus, if these video ads are placed on sites with audiences similar to YouTube, they may not cause as much of an uproar as expected.

On the other hand, the ads can be somewhat intrusive. Looking at them reminded me somewhat of the scene from Idiocracy, where the guy from the future is watching an episode of Ow! My Balls! on what appears to be a 12′ wide plasma screen dominated with advertising around the borders. Sites that choose to opt-in to this program may receive a backlash in the form of decreased readers annoyed at the new media. Another thing that remains to be seen is whether extensions like AdBlock Plus will be able to successfully filter out these new ads.

In any event, publishers will receive feedback from their readers (whether they like it or not), and will adjust their usage of these new ads accordingly. Most likely, it’ll be “more of the same”.

Facebook recently launched the latest version of their Platform, which combines their API with FQL and the new FBML. Facebook launched the next version of their platform at their developer’s conference, and accompanied the launch with many partner companies that rolled out applications designed with the platform simultaneously. This was also a huge event for independent developers, many of which got to work immediately on their own Facebook apps. (Thousands are now available) This is a huge event in the history of Facebook, and perhaps the next step in where the hugely-popular social networking site will go. As with any change in a social networking site, this one was met with some resistance and concern, but is it warranted?

The basics

The Facebook API has been around since last year, but has since added many more features. In its first version, there were only a limited number of methods one could call to request data. Early this year, they added FQL, their own SQL-like query language to allow for more flexibility in accessing that data. (In fact, now most of the API calls merely map to FQL queries as well) This newest version has added FBML, Facebook’s own markup language. Just like FQL is related somewhat to SQL, so is FBML to XHTML. Thus, web developers will have no problem adjusting to these Facebook-specific languages. From Facebook’s point of view, this makes them way more popular with developers.

FBML is big because it allows integration of Facebook apps with the main site. Before, Facebook applications were run on the developers’ own sites, and didn’t really hook into the main site. While the backend of the application will still have to be run off another site, data from the app can be neatly hooked into the main site in a variety of places, providing slick integration with Facebook itself. To quote Facebook:

You can hook into several Facebook integration points, including the Profile, Profile Actions, Canvas, News Feed and Mini-Feed.

This effectively turns Facebook apps into “widgets” that add features and functionality to the main site. In this way, users can pick and choose what neat apps they want to use on Facebook. At the same time, Facebook can keep the site neat and clean, because the integration makes it easy to adopt the Facebook “look & feel” for these widgets, preventing Facebook from turning into the graffiti-invested section of the web that MySpace is.

It’s about developers

Besides the ease with with most web developers will be able to learn the use of FQL and FBML, Facebook has also redone their Developer’s Site, making it look more different and separate from the main Facebook site. Most of the information remains the same, but it has been organized and streamlined more, and there are plenty of examples. Facebook also took the time to sign up many launch partners. For example, Last.fm quickly launched their Facebook application, and it’s quite popular.

Even more interesting is that Facebook is letting application developers keep the revenue made from ads served through their application. I guess this is a win-win situation, since by using the app, people stay on Facebook even more, so in the end, they make more money as well through their own ad system. This allays some of my fear outlined in my previous article about Facebook competing with services created through their API.

The OS of the web?

If this really is the case, then it signals a new direction for Facebook. No longer content to be just a popular social networking site, they now want to be a platform for all sorts of applications that will automatically have a wide audience. In this way, you can view Facebook as the “OS” and all of these widgets as the applications created for the users, in this case, the membership of Facebook. Users can easily pick and choose which apps they want to use, so nothing is forced upon users. Even “core” Facebook features such as “Notes” are placed under the same heading of “Applications” alongside user-created ones, so you can even opt-out of these.

This will have the overall effect of making Facebook the central place for social-networking. No more will users have to wait for Facebook itself to add features to the site, as if there’s enough need, some enterprising web developer will add the functionality. Want a calendar? 30boxes has one. (I’m waiting for a Google Calendar widget) Overall, I’m really impressed by the technical ideas behind all of this.

MySpace syndrome

One huge concern is whether or not allowing users to add any widgets they want to their profile will result in Facebook’s quality deteriorating to MySpace-like levels. No doubt that was a huge concern of the Facebook team, as they have built a successful social network that many users see as being more mature than MySpace. For the most part, they’ve accomplished this - integration with the main site has been done in a controlled way to ensure that widgets keep with the look & feel of the site, and don’t allow someone to turn their profile into an ugly affront to the visual sensory system.

However, users can still tend to overpopulate their profile with too many widgets, making things look cluttered. And, there’s nothing stopping anyone from making drawing widget. But perhaps the most unwanted feature was the addition of “trackers”. Many MySpace profiles now feature these - basically a link or an image to a third-party server that once loaded, can tell the profile owner who has visited their profile and how many times - a sort of form of reverse-stalking. Facebook took steps to ensure that this was not possible with their widgets.

This hasn’t stopped anyone from making such a widget for this purpose. However, this widget requires a user to click a link on the profile page in order to be tracked. In order to do this, they try to attract you to click this link because it sends you to a page that also shows who else has viewed the profile. It would seem that people’s capacity for voyeurism is boundless. However, as with all apps, you don’t have to add it, and you can even block or restrict it if you want.

In the end

All things considered, this will be beneficial for Facebook’s bottom line. I seriously doubt they’ll lose any significant number of users from this, and will certainly gain more and keep the existing user base happy and interested in what they’re doing. I think they learned from last year’s uproar over the introduction of News Feed that the loudest dissent starts right after the addition, and dies down soon after. News Feed is now an accepted part of Facebook, and I don’t think anyone would want to go without it.

It seems that before the launch of this service, Facebook decided to solicit some feedback from its users about its usefulness to them. After the “debacle” that surrounded last year’s introduction of the “News Feed”, perhaps they were a bit edgy about introducing new features without getting their users’ opinions. However, I believe this new service will be a big success, and should have come earlier. It also perhaps signals that there are more services to come.

If you build it, they will come

Yes, this is true, but with a slight modifier: If you build it, they will come, and possibly complain - but they’ll still come. Look at the news feed - when it debuted, users were up in arms about the “privacy violations” that it would bring. Now, it’s just as much a part of Facebook as anything else. At the core, it’s a good feature, but people just hate change. After they adjust to it, as long as it’s a good change, they’ll like it. And, considering that most of Facebook is the under-30 crowd, who easily adjust to new changes due growing up with computers, the adjustment won’t take long.

Which is why it’s perhaps a surprise that Facebook didn’t introduce this feature earlier. It fits right in with the concept of Facebook, that is, a localized social network of people you actually know. Research shows that people use Facebook like it’s a drug, and now that this new Marketplace is up front and center, it’ll be sure to attract lots of usage, perhaps even providing real competition to services like craigslist. Perhaps that’s the real power of Facebook - it has the ability to provide a huge audience to new services, provided they’re good.

In fact, many developers have rolled out similar services before Facebook’s, some of which even use Facebook’s own API to tie-in the service with Facebook. Also, Oodle recently sponsored a group on Facebook to attract users to its own classified service, though how effective this will be in light of Facebook’s new Marketplace, remains to be seen.

Part of the plan?

Facebook’s hesitation may have been part of their overall plan, though. No doubt they have smart people working for them, monitoring various online services that they’d like to compete against. They may have seen the popularity of classified ad sites, or more importantly, those that were using the Facebook API to implement their services. By allowing these sites to “take the plunge”, they could gauge the viability of such a service to the Facebook crowd - that is, whether it was worthwhile or not. Then, once they were convinced, they could begin working on an in-house version, that once ready, could be dumped onto “the masses” for an almost-certain success. Perhaps this was at least a part of the reason for the development of Facebook’s API last year.

Feature creep

Though I believe that this should have come earlier, I respect Facebook’s hesitation at introducing new features. Facebook, at it’s core, hasn’t changed much. They’ve only added new features slowly, and by doing this they avoid feature creep - the stage when an application has so many features that most users don’t know what they all do, and as a result, it ends up feeling bloated. Remember, when it comes to widely-used applications, simple is beautiful. By introducing new features only once in a while, Facebook gives its users time to adjust, so that they don’t feel like the site is changing into something very different than the one they joined.

However, I believe this may signal the end of Facebook’s Flyers, a paid ad feature. These were little user-generated ads that could be purchased for a fixed rate - you could, for example, buy an ad that would be displayed for 10,000 page views. Most of the ads that I saw were classifieds and would fit right in the new Marketplace section of Facebook. Now that you can place such an ad for free that people can search for, I see little use for “Flyers”. Facebook will likely quietly retire this feature, or it’ll only be used by companies wanting to advertise products and promotions.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have go list my textbooks on the Marketplace.

Developed by Ogilvy Toronto, a professional ad agency (as most ads are), the piece seems like it would fit in well on traditional media, such as TV. However, by distributing the video on YouTube, Dove made a critical change that seems to have benefitted them tremendously. The video has gotten well over a million views since its inception (and even more if you count all the copies), while at the same time costing virtually nothing to distribute. That’s quite the ROI - though a TV spot would probably get more viewers, it certainly would cost much, much more.

Furthermore, the people viewing the ads are doing so willingly. This is in sharp contrast to TV ads, which in my opinion, rely on ad nauseam tactics to drive home their point. This is really the advantage of viral marketing - it spreads from person to person (at least in its early stages), and not really from a centralized source. However, this also puts the onus on the advertiser to develop an interesting and captivating piece, as this is effectively determines how many people will see the ad, not how much money is spent on distribution. But, perhaps this is a good thing - after seeing some of the commercials they now force upon you at the theatres, I would welcome an improvement on advertising.

Another advantage of the viral marketing campaign are the inevitable spinoffs that will occur. The Dove video has already spawned copycat and parody pieces on YouTube, with people eager to either display their Photoship skills or elicite a laugh or two. In effect, this is giving Dove free publicity. While Dove isn’t the first company to use viral marketing to their advantage, this is one of the times I’ve seen a seemingly made-for-TV spot distributed only on the Internet. Except Dove’s foray into this arena to be a litmus test for other advertisers - and by most measures, the results seem to be quite positive. One could argue that all this publicity won’t necessarily result in increased sales - but that could be said of any marketing campaign.

Does this mean that the sky is falling for traditional advertising mediums? Well, yes and no. (Forgive me for taking the easy way out and avoiding a direct answer) Traditional advertising is not going anywhere anytime soon. You will still see companies throwing millions at the prospect of the 30-second SuperBowl ad, which has always been the time to put out innovative commercials. However, the Internet has its own niche, and one that is rapidly being taken over and being taken serious by more companies. I think this will eventually force marketers to re-think and hopefully innovate more when it comes to ad spots.

However, what I think is more important is how the hype and buzz about this movie came about - all of it happened through entirely untraditional channels, and SoaP may be the first movie that was heavily promoted and spread through viral marketing on the Internet, actively encouraged by New Line Cinema. This sets a precendent that other marketers are sure to notice

The viral spread

Viral marketing is nothing new. Basically, the concept of viral marketing is not to advertise by traditional methods, but rather by encouraging people and fans to spread the news of a product by word-of-mouth, to their friends, family and so-forth. This can be done by creating fun little web games that promote a particular product, and thus it is hoped that the game will be forwarded to friends. It’s called “viral” because the hype and buzz spreads from person-to-person, rather than from a particular media campaign (TV, billboard, etc.) directly to the person.

The rise of hugely popular social networks, such as MySpace, has made viral marketing more effective. Witness companies Unilever, using MySpace users to promote Axe deodourant. This method of advertising is extremely cheap compared to traditional methods, and can be very effective. It’s thus a low-risk option that’s just waiting to be exploited by more companies. Perhaps even more astonishing is the rise of companies like PayPerPost, which offers payment to bloggers who agree to write posts about certain products. In a way, these companies are just like regular ad agencies, except they’re operating in a new medium - the online viral market.

These techniques can be related to, or called “astroturfing”. The term itself is a play-on-words of the term “grassroots”, which basically means huge amounts of regular people voicing their support for a particular idea or policy. Astroturf, being fake grass, is thus the same to “grass” as “astroturfing” is to “grassroots” - apparent wide-spread user buzz about a particular product, when in fact the buzz or hype has been ochestrated.

Snakes on a Plane goes viral

The lead up to Snakes on a Plane and its move to viral marketing may have been accidental and unpredicated by the people behind the movie. When someone got wind of the absolutely outrageous title and concept, it apparently quickly spread throughout the web, becoming nothing short of an Internet meme.

This lead to many user-generated videos or art mocking or otherwise speculating on what might happen in the movie. A blog dedicated to it was even launched. And, of course, the many requests of a proper Samuel L. Jackson one-liner eventually lead New Line Cinema to re-open shooting of the movie in early 2006 for the explicit reason of adding this dialogue that users had so rampantly requested. In effect, New Line Cinmea was getting free advertising of their movie because of all the online buzz it was generating because of the outlandish concept. And, perhaps most importantly, they themselves decided to jump on the bandwagon, and further encourage more hype by actually yielding to users’ requests to make the move even more outrageous!

One could argue that the movie wouldn’t have generated so much buzz had it not been so outrageous, but one thing is for sure: There is no way this movie would have generated so much hype before its release if it were not for the web. I guarantee you that almost everyone in the theatre last night had read up on SoaP on the web before going to view it - heck, that’s the only way they would’ve known about it!

It’s all about the advertising

The advent of Internet advertising as a viable income source has been the fuel for this tranformation. Ever since the major players launched huge ad networks (Google’s AdSense and Yahoo’s Publisher Network), it’s becoming easier for sites to “make a quick” buck without apparently selling any service or product. This ad model is what allows you to sign up for a bevy of free services, from webmail to social news sites, and has been the basis for large social networking sites like Facebook. It’s also been a focal point for traditional news services, who not only have been making money off ads on their own sites, but have also bought out sites like MySpace in the further hopes of money from online advertising.

However, it’s also had the effect of making it much easier for “the little guy” to get into the business, sometimes wreaking havoc on established businesses. A great example is Markus Frind, who single-handedly started up a dating site that shook up the entire online dating industry, as he began offering a something for free that typically was a paid service. He made quite a lot of money off of his site, but overall, things were much cheaper for the “customer”. (No fees as opposed to fees)

The long tail

This sort of action by smaller companies is going to change the industry, and Markus himself best sums it up. The basic idea is that smaller startups, entirely self-funded (or at least not venture-capitalized), are taking over sectors, offering services and will be entirely happy making overall, less money than their predecessors. One need only look at TechCrunch on a regular day to see many of these startups being featured.

On the web, things move about ten times as fast, and that includes the launch of new companies and how their services will change and be updated. Where else can a business or service launch, and then suddenly be bought for $2 billion only a scant few years later? The pace at which ideas spread on the web is frightening.

Wag the tail

The best recent example of a typical industry starting to be overtaken by smaller startups is the online job search market. Typically, these areas have been dominated by sites like Monster or Workopolis. These sites are well known and established; however, recently niche job boards like those at 37 signals and TechCrunch have launched, with positive results. The idea behind these job boards seems, at first, the opposite of what would be desired - they are only known by a select group of individuals, typically those who visited the sites before the job board launched.

But that’s just the advantage - not everyone knows, so not just anyone applies to the jobs listed there, producing a higher quality of job applicants. This, in turn, makes it much easier for companies to find good people, thus cutting down on their costs, saving them money. This, of course, reduces the amount of money being pumped into this industry. Take this one comment about the TechCrunch job board (called the CrunchBoard):

We (photobucket) had posted 3 jobs on CrunchBoard and have had a positive experience thus far. We are getting less resume’s than maybe a monster or dice, but the ones we get are much more qualified. I’d be surprised if we don’t fill at least one of these positions in the coming weeks from a CrunchBoard referral. A few hundred bucks sure beats the $20k or so a recruiter will get you for.

Going from spending $20 K to less than $1 K certainly amounts to huge savings, and as more and more companies learn about this, you can bet they’ll be at least partially switching over to this model instead of traditional recruitment practices. This is really the same thing as the typical Internet user benefiting from all the free services out there - they save money, but at the cost of the previous business model suffering decreased revenues.

Whether these new job boards can maintain their level of high-quality applicants is one story, but what is sure to stay, is the fact that traditional industries are going to see their market value decreased because of low-cost Internet startups, for better or for worse.

Malicious ‘Wares

What I’m talking about, of course, is spyware (or adware), a particularly horrid form of malware that seeks to take control of your computer for profit. In essence, spyware is a form a Trojan, which is itself a form of computer virus. If you’ve been using computers for a while, you’ll be familiar with viruses - pieces of malicious software designed to replicate, spread to other systems and in the process, perhaps harm or damage the computers it infects - thus making them less usable to the people who own them. Maybe you’ve even had the opportunity to remove a virus from a computer (of course, not your own, but a friend’s), and then you’ll have realized it’s often no easy task.

Well, spyware acts in a similar manner. It often installs itself unbeknownst to the user (by exploiting security holes in a user’s system), and collects information on their browsing habits to determine when to and what ads to serve up, often in the process slowing down the performance of the system. Spyware or adware also often makes itself hard to remove, and comes packaged with other seemingly benign software, such as some sort of toolbar for your browser. Even after you’ve uninstalled the toolbar the spyware came with, it often still remains, causing pains, headaches and annoyances. What sets it aside from traditional viruses is that this software was not written by some experimenting programmer curious about what could be accomplished; spyware is instead written for specific purpose - to make money off of you, by subjecting you to ads you never agreed to see.

Money Talks

A brief overview of how most websites make money goes something like this.

1. Create a new, innovative, or otherwise attractive website that will attract readers because of its content. (The website doesn’t have to be completely new in idea just as long as it does something well, and captures an untapped demographic)
2. Put ads on your website. (Many companies offer ad programs for websites, a sort of affiliate program)
3. If you get a lot of traffic, you’ll probably make money off of the ads. (Not as simple as this, but simplified for the sake of this article.)

The ability of some websites to make tons of money off this seemingly simple business model was observed many people, some of whom began thinking of unethical ways to make money off this model. Thus spyware/adware was born. The idea is to install some sort of ad-serving software on the user’s computer, usually by bundling it surreptitiously with supposedly “free” software. Thus, the makers bypass the need to create a quality, content-filled website by getting their ads directly onto your computer, without your permission. While you’re busy clicking and closing popups and wondering why your system is running so slow, they’re busy raking in the dough - the people who push spyware often get paid per install by the spyware developers.

The situation gets even more complicated when you discover that certain forms of spyware insert or replace ads on websites you visit! This is bad for several reasons, as not only does it make it difficult to ascertain the source of the ad, but ad revenue to legitimate sites suffers as well.

Spyware pushers

But, it gets worse. Recently, it was discovered that teenagers on MySpace were being used to push ads on unsuspecting users, effectively turning them into unknowing distributers of malware made by Zango/180 solutions. The scam involved creating a series of videos that the dealer promoted to MySpace users, encouraging them to put the videos on their site - many of the videos were the usual type that provide a meaningless five minute diversion - so it’s clear they were catering to the MySpace demographic.

Placing the video on one’s MySpace merely required the copying and pasting of a few lines of seemingly harmless code. However, users viewing the MySpace sites would be prompted to install the Zango adware in order to view the video. While the prompt did explain that ads would be served up, it was all in the fine print, and clicking “Play” on the video amounted to the acceptance of this laughable EULA. After all, no one reads prompts or alerts, especially the type who want to see a MySpace video. All this invariably will leave a lot of people infected with this adware, (many of whom won’t even know it), all while somebody makes quite a bit of money.

While the offending pages were removed, it still doesn’t solve root of the problem. Adware is now not only being served up by knowing partners, but also by people who didn’t even know they were complicit in the spread of damaging software.

Ads, ads, everywhere

So, who’s paying to have their ads put on your computer, without your knowledge? Apparently, a lot of companies. Recently, it was also disclosed that Vonage is heavily into funding spyware - but they by no means are the only big player. It should come as no surprise that many of the big players can easily be seen on traditional media such as print, or television. While sometimes these companies contract out advertising to agencies that pass jobs onto spyware companies without their knowledge, many fully know what they are doing. People need to made aware of this, and more anti-spyware laws need to be passed, if only to discourage this practice.

Prevention is the key… or is it?

Back before spyware and adware were big, people were worried about viruses. However, it was felt that if you had antivirus protection, you would be okay, as long as you kept up to date. Nowadays, there are so many forms of malware from so many different sources, that it’s hard to keep up to date. Many resources tell you to have two more anti-spyware programs installed concurrently, along with antivirus and some sort of firewall. All of this can be very confusing to the beginner or novice computer user.

Many people say the solution is just to use Firefox instead of IE when browsing, to practice “safe surfing habits”, and keep your antivirus/antispyware up to date. They also say that when someone gets infected with spyware or adware, it’s their own fault for not being vigilant. I disagree - if someone broke into your house, would it be your fault that you didn’t board up the windows, reinforce the door, and add an extra-tough master lock into the mix?

The problem lies with the companies who are making this spyware, the people who are pushing it, and finally with the companies who solicit the services of adware to increase their market share. There’s nothing wrong with making money - everyone has to do it, but when you’re making money off hijacking someone else’s hard-earned computer, something is wrong.