Google cuts bundling deal with Adobe, also rumor of having CPA network |
GOOGle stock had a nice bump today (disclaimer: I’m a shareholder) up 3.86% / +$14.96, no doubt helped by the Adobe bundling deal. This sounds similar to the recent deal with Dell which would bundle-in the Google Toolbar on Dell computers. So the next time we go to download Acrobat Reader we can probably expect to see Google Toolbar helpfully checked for us. Gee thanks, Google [heavy sarcasm]. Check out how Google plays this one on their blog:
We’re excited to partner with Adobe to make these features available to their users, and look forward to finding other ways to work together.
“Available” to users as an option for those who actually want the Google toolbar? These bundling deals are like visiting the drive-up window when you ordered a burger and having a burrito shoved in the bag too. Adobe’s press release has more details:
The Google Toolbar will now be offered as part of the Shockwave Player installation process for Internet Explorer on Windows. Under the terms of the agreement, the Google Toolbar will also be offered as part of other Adobe product installations in the future.
Listen Google, if we want your toolbar, we’ll seek that badboy out and download. Of course the toolbar will get more downloads this way so you can artificially inflate the number of users who “wanted” to download the toolbar. This reminds me of the crap that newspapers and magazines do to pump up their numbers.
Stop Google, please. Advertising the toolbar all over your once sacred hompage space was bad enough. This just looks desperate. If people like it they will download without you having to cut these lucrative bundling deals.
I won’t use their toolbar until they stop doing this. If somebody wants my eyeballs this badly, it just drives me away. Go ahead and tell me all the cool stuff I’m missing. The best Google is going to get with this overanxious toolbar marketing is me testing their toolbar and then uninstalling. I’m sure they really don’t care what a single user (moi) thinks but I don’t care for any company, including those I invest in, engaging in anti-user behavior. I think very, very few bundling deals actually benefit users. If we want shockwave, how dare you think we want your toolbar too!
Am I wrong? Do you like to get extra software bundled when you visit to download something specific? Yeah, it’s no big deal unchecking a box, I get that, but at least tell us the truth: “Most users don’t care for this, but we can make more money doing this and get more people to download who don’t read more carefully, so we are.” Disagree? Go ahead and tell me what you think below.
Click Per Action (CPA) network?
And here some might have thought by the headline I was talking about Certified Public Accountants (that’s a joke), no, I’m much more interested in the second tidbit of news, coming via David Jackson:
Let’s not mince words. This is Google’s ValueClick (VCLK) killer. Google has greater resources than ValueClick, a larger advertiser base, and the advantage of being able to offer publishers a full range of ads based on page views [CPM], clicks [CPC] and now actual purchases or leads [CPA]. Google can translate the performance of all these ads into “effective CPMs”, allowing publishers to compare and optimize for whichever type of ad produces maximum revenue.
I’d like to see a Valueclick/CJ killer from Google. I haven’t receive an invite to see this rumored CPA system and probably won’t very soon with comments like the ones I made in the first part of this post but will be on the lookout. Come to think of it, I’m still waiting for Adsense to open up RSS for Wordpress users.
Update 6:27pm PST: Doh! Had CPA marked as “Cost Per Acquisition” My bad. Fixed.
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“Am I wrong? Do you like to get extra software bundled when you visit to download something specific?”
F no! it’s good to see someone else who agrees. i’m tired of bloat, i’m tired of bundles, and i’m tired of shit i don’t want. if i’m installing a freaking PDF reader, what the hell do i care about some stupid web search application?
and yes, while unchecking a box is no big deal for someone who knows computers like you and me, for someone like my parents who have no idea and just click “next” through installations it’s very bad. in fact, it’s the reason i have to go over there ever few weeks and clean off their machines from all this crap they don’t want. mysearch, yahoo, and now google all installing toolbars with random unrelated apps - good lord, they just want to check their email!
your burrito similie is priceless. as of right now, i’ll be removing the google toolbar from both my browsers, and relying on the search box in the upper right corner of firefox to do all my searching. screw you bloat, and screw you greedy google. for the love of god, let’s get back to “don’t be evil”.
Comment by stephen — June 22, 2006 @ 9:08 am PST
Well, on the one hand, sure I agree with you. For instance, when I go to Apple’s web site to get Quicktime, I hate being asked to install iTunes (or even having it bother to check whether I have it or not). The same thing happens when I go to install my airport admin utilities. In some cases it is handy - having applications that require each other install the latest versions of each other can be nice.
By now you have probably realized that I am a mac user, and this doesn’t apply to me, but I wanted to offer an outside perspective, and this is why: I thought, maybe we think of it as an inconvenience, but what about people who have never heard of the toolbar before? Now that it’s available to them, wouldn’t they like to try it? And then I thought about your example of having to go over to your parents’ house and clean off their computer. I have had to do the exact same thing. A lot of my mother’s friends ask for my help with their computers for this very reason.
To turn it around for a moment, I can see why Google would do this. They want to get their software out there, and putting the toolbar on is only the first step toward getting everyone to use google and download other parts of their software package. Their goal of wanting to put their software on every windows computer? Well, it sounds great from a company widely associated with offering free services and never directly selling mainstream products.
But it doesn’t sound that way on principle. Just the mere act of having your software on someone’s computer doesn’t mean they are using it, or that they even recognize it is there or will want to explore it just because it’s hanging around in their face. For the longest time I had MSN messenger sitting in my applications folder and never once touched it. Same with yahoo messenger, and all these other similar things. Toolbars are practically a disease in the windows world when you don’t know how to avoid pulling them onto your computer inadvertently. *And most people don’t.* So nice try, Google, and I still love you, but it doesn’t mean you’ve made any new friends just because you’ve shoved your software on them like a pie in the face.
Long paragraph short (even though I already went through the long paragraph… but oh well): the amount of software downloads and the amount of active users are completely different numbers.
I do not use the google toolbar. I use firefox, which blocks my popups just find and has a google search box built in. I think it would be great if everyone used google; I can’t think of a better search engine out there that is so familiar and easy to use. I think it would even be great if everyone downloaded their software, because it’s awesome
Voluntarily.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, right?
This move just seems so un-Google.
Comment by All Your Lost Socks — June 22, 2006 @ 4:54 pm PST
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