Remember this name: Ben Edelman. Ben has a very interesting site about spyware and peer-2-peer programs (e.g. Kazaa, bearshare, gnucleus etc). Ben has done some testing and found almost all of these programs to contain spyware. The single program he found which didn't install any is Limewire.
I particularly liked Ben's site as he has lots of visual examples of what to look out for. He also explains how the people behind these programs use dubious means to get them installed and how some of the companies providing them are even linked to major search engines (like google and yahoo) either indirectly or directly. I found Bens site really interesting as at the moment I am looking for a new favourite search engine.
Yes I am now somewhat dissillusioned with my old favourite (google). Is this the beginning of the end? The source of my frustration? I actually went ahead and registered some domain names (which I admit was less than a week ago). However none of the search engines are currently showing me at the top of their rankings despite the fact I now own the two main variations (ie Cyberhythm.co.uk and Cyberhythm.com. I'm glad these are for a personal project as any business which suffered from this sort of domain ignorance abuse could really suffer.
Ironically, I do a search for Cyberhythm and the top listing is for a guy in Florida who has been selling an information product via clickbank and outsourcing some of the work on Elance.com (which is googles top result). It's as though google has vowed never to display my site without any communication about it's reasoning.
There seems to be some benevolent force behind the scenes of search engines at the moment though. Mamma.com and Metacrawler.com are now linked (with several others) to a service which charges just under $50 for a submission service. Damn!!! both of those used to be my favourites at one time.
So it looks like I'm currently without a favourite. Maybe the time is right for a new engine. One which doesn't seek to become a police state; one which gives free submission to all and one which gives prominence to those who have already been subjected to the scam of paying a domain registrar to register their existing identity as a domain name. If anyone finds such a service, please contact me.
In the mean time google will have to figure out for themselves that if people can't find my site, they're not going to earn much revenue from their adsense code on it
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