David Herron's Blog

JRE / Google toolbar now live on java.com

Remember that vague announcement last week with cooperation between Google and Sun? The concrete piece of that announcement was for Sun to bundle the Google toolbar with the Windows JRE download.

Now, a week+ later, the combined JRE+Toolbar download is available.

The windows install help page discusses it, showing that the installation of the toolbar happens as part of the JRE Installer. Since I use a Linux system I haven't tried the Windows installer, but it appears you would go to the java.com JRE download page, select the Windows installer, and awaaaay you go. (Hurm, the install help linked from that page doesn't mention the toolbar installer, while the other help page clearly does....? I'll have to ask my teammate who's been testing this what's up.)

And, no, I don't know better than the rest of you what the Google+Sun cooperation means for the long term. The speculation about the possibilities sure is fun though.

Comments

• Any way to prevent that piece of spyware from installing?
  If not it's bye bye Java for anything except serverside applications on headless Unix machines, and I call on all others here to do the same.

  Posted by: jwenting on October 13, 2005 at 11:25 PM

• It has been said and repeated that this is an option in the install process. Also, the toolbar ships only with JRE downloaded from java.com, not java.sun.com. Finally, why do you call it a spyware?

  Posted by: gfx on October 14, 2005 at 01:58 AM

• I found out about this tonight. One of the other users in the java newsgroup community found this information:

  
  *** Some of our services, including Google Toolbar and Google
  Web Accelerator, send the uniform resource locators
  ("URLs") of web pages that you request to Google. When you
  use these services, Google will receive and store the URL
  sent by the web sites you visit, including any personal
  information inserted into those URLs by the web site
  operator. (...) When the URL is transmitted to Google, our
  servers automatically store the URL, including any
  personal information that has been embedded after the
  question mark***

  If it looks like "SPYWARE" and it acts like "SPYWARE". Makes sense to me to call it what it is.. "SPYWARE"! How can I, as a consultant, recommend to download this for a prospective client if this Google "SPYWARE" is embedded in it..? With no way to scrape it off the bottom of Sun distribution? I don't see the connections of software other than a money deal. Reminds me of what Microsoft is going to do with the new Windose OS they are coming out with soon. That is, with 7 or 8 distributions types. Sounds like the new US Prescription plan. A phrase from a move I saw once keeps coming to mind. "Where is the Money?".

  Posted by: ichbin on March 08, 2006 at 08:08 PM

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