Google has added a "cool feature" to their service recently.
That feature hijacks my PC to download random pages from the Internet without my knowledge or consent.
This is completely unacceptable. With my computer, I beg to be able to decide myself what I want downloaded and what not.
Apparently, while Google is making use of this big time, this "feature" is enabled in Firefox by default. So the responsibility for this rests originally not with Google, but with whoever had this bright idea at the Firefox development team. However, they are contributing massively to the problem. Downloading of potentially illegal files to their user's computers without the user's knowledge or consent is not a "cool feature", but a recipe for disaster to happen, even without considering the waste of Internet bandwidth associated with this.
I am not yet ready to stop using Google completely.
If you happen to share my feeling that this is a really dumb idea, Firefox makes it easy to disable hijacking of your browser by any page you visit.
Essential instructions for this (takes only a couple of seconds) here.
Comments and trackbacks are welcome at the Google pagerank zero shadow site.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at April 2, 2005 09:37 PM