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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

Exactly this. I'm often advising people to install VLC when they are having problems with Windows Media Player, but whenever I tell them to google for it on their own they end up with some toolbar infested crap.

So now I specifically instruct them to go to videolan.org.

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Googling for "vlc", "vlc download", or "vlc player", the top 3-4 results are all to videolan.org.

Ads may distort this for some users, though...

Maybe because I spent almost 3 hours per week to clean it.

Wow. That really sucks man. I hope something changes where you don't have to do this forever.

I told my Dad's wife to download VLC and she ended up with the crapware version too. I didn't even realize they existed until then. I was shocked =(

You have my sympathies.

Thanks :)

What do you do, what proportion of your time is advancing yours or flagging them?

Sorry, I cannot answer to that publicly. Mail me.

I understand that some details should be kept secret, but it would be nice to read a blog post about this.

Do you know if the Intel App-Up site is legit or do they also bundle the crapware installers?

http://www.appup.com/app-details/vlc?edgSrcID=398114176

It's the first thing I see for "VLC" when I turned off Ad Block.

Completely free, no adware, no spyware and full source is provided. This is rare :)

Probably the ads. For a while, Google helped made this even worse by paying companies like Dell to set the default search on new PCs to specially-customised version of Google with far more prominent ads that were less clearly distinguished from normal search results.

Wow. Source?

Dell has been installing crap since at least 2006/07. Thats when I started wondering why all new PCs at a certain company where all infected just few days after purchase. Then I realized this thing (myway?) was being installed by default.

I really didn't think it was ever a Google product though. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes unfortunately unless you have adbock installed the "first" results in a google search for "vlc" are typical for the (adware, spammy) sites.

In a clean, private window of safari, I'm seeing 4 videolan results before cnet and others of varying levels of crapitude.

He mentions "adblock", if I google for "vlc" I get an advert for a adware version of VLC above the videolan.org ones.

videolan.org has a pretty confusing name. I bet if it was vlcplayer.com it would get better downloads.

For the same reasons mozilla.org is not firefoxbrowser.com

perhaps not the best example, since the Mozilla Foundation (mozilla.org) runs the Firefox promotions to getfirefox.com.

On your Google, with your results, with your search history and thus in your specific filter bubble.

Fuck, people, don't you get this already? There is no n-th result on Google. Don't act like there is.

yes, this didn't always used to be the case though.

Hopefully some google algo tweaks are working to help.

True now, but it wasn't true a year ago when I installed Windows 7.

This just happened to my friend yesterday when I told him to install VLC. I think he may have clicked an ad instead of the first search result. I saw three pages for different add-ons and toolbars with several pre-checked checkboxes apiece. After unchecking and clicking through it just exited (hopefully) and launched the VLC install program.

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