Microsoft, Apple, Google Told To Stop Sneaky Plugins

Asa Dotzler, a Firefox browser developer and director of community development for Mozilla, has taken up arms against Apple, Microsoft, Google and other companies that furtively import plug-ins to Firefox.

Dotzler was thumbing through the plug-ins on his browser when he discovered several that he did not know about.

A Benign Trojan Horse

“When I installed iTunes, in order to manage my music collection and sync to my iPod, why did Apple think it was OK to add the iTunes Application Detector plug-in to my Firefox web browser without asking me?” he enquires in his blog. “Why did Microsoft think it was OK to sneak their Windows Live Photo Gallery or Office Live Plug-in for Firefox into my browser (presumably) when I installed Microsoft Office?

“What makes Google think it’s reasonable behaviour for them to slip a Google Update plug-in into Firefox when I installed Google Earth or Google Chrome (not sure which one caused this) without asking me first?” he added.

Dotzler does not have any real issues with these ‘value-adds’ except that they were placed on his system without his consent being sought. The whole process is similar to the way Trojan Horse malware is placed on a system in the shadow of installing a desirable download.

“The means by which they were installed was sneaky, underhanded, and wrong,” he complained.

“Google, Microsoft, Apple, RockMelt and any others out there who are doing this, I’m calling on you to stop this now. If you want to add software to my system, ask me. Sneaking software onto my system that I didn’t ask for is evil (precisely in the Google ‘don’t be evil’ sense),” he added.

As a developer, Dotzler pointed out that Firefox and other applications can help users deal with “bad behaviour” but he feels that he should not have to do this for so-called “trustworthy” software vendors. Dealing with issues such as this means that developers cannot focus on more important usability issues.

The solution, he said, is already there: “It’s really simple. ASK first!”