whats your experience with Google's tools ? are they spyware ?

[\(ProteanThread\)]

if not are they any good ? or are there better alternatives ?

http://www.google.com/downloads/

 

[Sparky]

if not are they any good ? or are there better alternatives ?

I've used:

1) Google Toolbar for about 6 months non-stop. Nice pop-up blocking.
Dropped it after I dropped IE. Dunno whether the toolbar did it or I
but after install, the url field in IE disappeared. Minor annoyance.
Overall, fun, speedy, stable.

2) Keyhole for the 7-day trial. Fun, speedy enough, stable. No /need/
for it though. Wish I did.

3) Picasa2. Since its release. The use of this program has increased
the distribution of my photos (prints, cds, web) dramatically. An
excellent, /simple/ tool. Still use it for organizing & publishing.
Fun, speedy, stable.

4) Apart from Tools, I've used the following google-related stuff:
a. Froogal. S'ok. I have better luck w/fatwallet and pricewatch
b. Local. Useful maybe half the time. Disappointing
c. Scroogle. See why here http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html

Out of all of this, the only tools I still use are Picasa2 and Scroogle.
Once I turned off the auto-update feature on Picasa2, Zone Alarm no
longer reports it "phoning home." I turn it on occassionally for
updates, then off again.


Are they spyware? Sorry can't help you there. That's a big topic,
starting with a quantifiable definition. I know Google, the company,
loves aggregating info on a HUGE scale but they assert they don't
collect any individually identifiable info.

hth,
-Sparky

 

[Mike Dee]

if not are they any good ? or are there better alternatives ?

On Picasa2...
Here's an interesting blog, some yays, some nays:
<http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/4855307085341518>

"Downloaded Picasa and installed. Biggest mistake ever. Computer
trashed with SpyWare and AdWare."

"...as soon as I downloaded Picassa, I was bombarded with VX2 and
IEPlugin adware/spyware, and every time I would restart my PC after
cleaning it would reapear. It wasn't until I removed Picassa that I
finally had a clean PC."

"Spyware?

I downloaded and tried Picasa, and was unfavorably impressed. The thing
requires admin priviledges to run, and immediately picked up the
pictures in another account...
.... definite privacy risk."

"Just noticed 15 attemps in my firewall log over the course of 12
minutes of this program trying to connect to share1.picasa.net [on
alternate IP addresses too], from a machine that has been idle for 12
hours. I don't consider this sort of activity "checking for software
updates". Off it comes."

"Spyware!

Several components of Picasa attempted to connect to the intenet and
were reported by ZoneAlarm. I let them have access (trusting Google -
don't they have a slogan about making money ethically?). Within hours I
had 16 incoming hits on my webserver from 66.249.65.196 and
66.249.66.109 from a bot identified as "Mediapartners-Google/2.1".

This is very suspicious because my web site is running on a non-
standard port (how did google get the port number?) and every page on
the site has --meta name="robots" content="none, noindex, noarchive,
nofollow"-- in the page header. My web site has been up for two years
and I have never had a bot hit before - that's why I am running on a
non-standard port, I don't want any."


etc etc...

Whether it's a good prog or spyware etc, I don't know, I'm not about to
find out. However the link above shows several reports of mal type
intrusions because of installing Picasa2. It's not an isolated
incident.

 

[Sparky]

On Picasa2...
Here's an interesting blog, some yays, some nays:
<http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/4855307085341518>

<snip>

Thanks for the heads-up, Mike!

-Sparky

 

[\(ProteanThread\)]

Thanks for the heads-up, Mike!

-Sparky

Just curious, after reading Mike's post, would you continue to use Picasa 2?

 

[Jsp]

On Picasa2...

"Spyware!

I happen to be a regular user of the functionality of Picasa2. Alarmed
by this post I updated and ran both Spybot S&D and Ad Aware SE. They
came up with nothing. Doesn't that mean anything with regard to Picasa2?

Jsp

 

[Aaron]

I happen to be a regular user of the functionality of Picasa2. Alarmed
by this post I updated and ran both Spybot S&D and Ad Aware SE. They
came up with nothing. Doesn't that mean anything with regard to

Picasa2?

Not necessarily. For detection to occur it needs to be in the signature
database.

I haven't tried Picasa2 BTW, so I dont know if the claims are true.

 

[jmatt]

Doesn't that mean anything with regard to Picasa2?

You would have already removed the Spyfiles .

I find it best to check for spyfiles after installing a new program
& MS updates .

Most programs still work OK after spy removal , if not , I find
another program .

* Posted via http://www.sixfiles.com/forum