Ask Search Plugin Clarification

February 9, 2010

There seems to be a misunderstanding out there due to the purposeful spreading of misinformation by people who want to do nothing other than cause problems and attack AMO developers. One of the common things I read by people who leave negative reviews is that I hijack people's browsers by forcing them to install an Ask.com toolbar. Every bit of that accusation is false.

Nothing is hijacked. There is no adware or malware installed on a user's system. The only thing that the bundled Ask extension does is add a custom search plugin in the search window of the browser toolbar. This is added to the list of already available and installed plugins .
Nothing is forced on a user. When installing the theme on AMO, a user must accept the EULA by clicking on the accept button. When installation begins, a popup window displays asking the user if they would like to proceed with the addition of the Ask.com search plugin. Nobody is required to use the search and you can switch back anytime. On my website, you must accept the EULA but there is no opt-in popup so the user has total control of what is being installed on their system.
There is no toolbar installed. All that is added is the simple plugin making Ask.com a search option. Ask is set as the default search instead of Google. This is my main source of revenue to support the continued development of my current themes and the many more I have planned.

Fortunately, I have great users overall and the vast majority of you are supportive, kind, and very encouraging and I appreciate that tremendously. Unfortunately, however, there is a tiny, yet very loud, minority out there that feels it is their purpose in life to attack, smear, and call names for no other reason than to cause problems. I thank you for your continued support. If you do not want install the extension, you can simply add the search plugin by clicking here.

Posted by Brett | Filed Under My Thoughts, News

Comments

7 Responses to “Ask Search Plugin Clarification”

PD on February 10th, 2010 8:09 am

The problem, Brett, is that if you don’t want to accept the ASK plug-in’s request to be your new default search engine, the pop-up appears again and again and again and again. It does, indeed, become a little trojan-like annoyance. Like many others, I received a semi-automatic update through Firefox for Aero Fox and had no idea it included a bundled little surprise. Bad idea on your part. I’d rethink this one.
Brett on February 10th, 2010 11:15 am

I have tested this hundreds of times and I have never seen the plugin popup window reappear when new pages are opened after you click cancel or close the window. I am not sure what you are seeing but there is nothing in the extension that would cause it to keep popping up to ask you to install. If you click cancel then the extension uninstalls and leaves nothing behind. This is a very simple extension that asks the user if they would like to install the Ask search plugin. If they select no, there is nothing in it that causes it to keep popping up.
Steve on February 10th, 2010 1:19 pm

Hi, Brett. I just had the ask.com experience with the latest update of Aero Fox and I found my way here. I’ve read your post of July 2009. I’m not complaining, but thought you should know what happened. I have Update Notifier installed and it told me there was an update to the theme. It only mentioned the theme – no mention of the search bar plugin. I accepted the theme update. It installed. Next I got a message saying Aero Fox & Vitus Ask.com were both successfully installed. I did not get the popup that you describe – the install was completely silent, except for the comfirmation that it was successful. Maybe it was because of update notifier, but anyway I don’t think it was supposed t be that way. Regards, Steve.
Christopher on February 10th, 2010 7:15 pm

I’m with Brett:
I have switched themes back and forth. With football season I was using a theme from the teams web site. I used “Bing”; it gave me the option, so I changed it. When I switched back to “Aquatint Black” ,I forgot to restore “Ask”. Until a couple days ago I was going to use ask, looked up, and it was still “Bing”! And unless I manually switched the search engine back, it remained the same. You might want to adjust your preferences for the auto~update settings.
Brett on February 11th, 2010 8:48 am

It places the Virtus search extension on there to ask if you would like to install Ask as your search. If you click cancel, it uninstalls it immediately and leaves nothing behind. The only reason it would not give you the popup opt-in screen is if you already have Ask.com in your list of included search plugins. If you have Ask.com already included, it uninstalls the search extension. If you go into Tools>Add-ons and look at your list of extensions you should not see the Virtus Ask search extension listed if you did not click on the “yes, install Ask” button.
Stevie I on February 14th, 2010 3:12 pm

Why all the hubub?
Sure lots of us HATE anything bundled with their downloads, as many of them are some type of adware or worse.
However Brett seems to have gone to great pains to allow opting-in and -out of this.
He is obviously aware of the sensitive nature of such things, as many of us HAVE had bad experiences in the past with unscrupulous installs, and some vendors have done this with Ask as well as Google and many other companies’ products (both evil and safe ones).
Everyone needs to make a living, and not all theme-makers do it as a hobby, as you can tell by the quality, or lack thereof of many themes.
If Brett needs to make some money for the time he invests in the great themes YOU use, he can either get paid by Ask or charge money for his themes. GIVE THE GUY A BREAK– He’s made it as idiot-proof as possible to opt-out or into the thing.
If someone cant figure out how to remove a search-engine plug in (it’s 5 mouse clicks) they should stick to their i-phone.
Brett on February 19th, 2010 3:05 pm

Stevie,

Thanks for the backup

As you have said, I have made this as easy as possible to either add the search plugin or remove it and still use the theme.