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Comment by rrrrtttt | Hacker News Reader

Let me tell you an anecdote why I think Ballmer was incompetent and largely responsible for the sorry state that Microsoft is in at the moment. Yesterday there was a long article in the Israeli newspaper Globes about the success of the Israeli adware companies. Israel has in recent years become a world leader in software that installs unwanted toolbars on your elderly dad and mom's PC and "monetizes" them until they get their son or daughter to come over and fix it.

The list of such companies includes some really big ones, like Babylon and Conduit. These companies are making their profits by degrading Windows users' experience. Not only didn't Ballmer do anything to fight them, Microsoft actually has affiliate agreements with these companies to take a slice of the profits. Screwing your own customers like that cannot end well for Microsoft.

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Can you provide the source about the part " Microsoft actually has affiliate agreements with these companies to take a slice of the profits"?

Citation needed. Sounds like more FUD.

Bing has affiliate agreements with them. It is not FUD. You can believe it or not.

S.O.U.R.C.E.?

There are a couple in the comments above, this is one example: http://allthingsd.com/20101201/conduit-dumps-google-search-f...

I remember the Microsoft deal with Conduit [1], but can't dig up anything that links Microsoft with Babylon.

Interestingly, that link implies that Conduit had a deal with Google before they got a better deal for switching to Bing.

[1] http://allthingsd.com/20101201/conduit-dumps-google-search-f...

I think that's the point: when Google has refused to continue to profit off browser-hijacking companies, Microsoft is only too eager to step up to offer Bing.

Unfortunately I can't find anything in English, although Babylon was going to do an IPO in the US earlier this year, so you would expect there to be some information about them in English. The Hebrew article talks about how they are "diversifying away" from Google by making affiliate agreements with Microsoft Bing and Yahoo. The Hebrew article is here: http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1000874482.

Interesting story; thanks for posting that.

Yeah Matt it is

Except, you know, Windows Defender in Windows Vista, 7, and 8 (now includes AV too).

I didn't know this. Can you tell me how the adware firms earn money? I am asking out of sincere curiosity.

They sell traffic to Pay Per View companies, which in turn sell it to affiliates. Basically, if you are an affiliate you can go to a PPV company and buy pageview for a landing page of your choice which will be prompted in response to a given action by the user. For example, you might want to prompt your scammy acai berry trial affiliate page to people who searched for the word 'diet' in google or visited weightwatchers.com. The ad software takes care of popping up the right ad for the right user, according to the criteria of the campaign.

Ad popups - Separate windows with ads based on your browsing history or even whatever they find installed on your system.

Ad injection - Putting ads on web pages they didn't write, such as Google search results.

Ad substitution - Replacing ads on web sites with their own ads.

Cookie stuffing - Injecting or clobbering referral cookies for sites like Amazon so that they get an undeserved commission on things you buy.

Also search - replacing the browser's default search engine with their own or a partner's and getting a cut of the ad revenue.

I'm pretty sure that has very little to do with Microsoft's state today.

He didn't say it did. He said it was revealing of Ballmer, who does have something to do with Microsoft's state today.

Israeli? That seems strange ... I don't want to name regions, but you've got your geography wrong if you think they're the worst.

Conduit is a billion dollar company, with a successful business pimping installers and toolbars, and is Israeli. Babylon is just a few hundred millions, doing mostly the same (they started out with a very nice dictionary system, but that doesn't make much money, especially after google translate). Cydoor, that ran the ads inside Kazaa and programs of the day, was also Israeli. iMesh, if I'm not mistaken, as also Israeli.

I'm sure there are larger malware operations, but the Israeli adware economy is probably the largest "legit" one.

Screwing over your own customers... you mean like when Microsoft enthusiastically sold out their users to the NSA?

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