March 04, 2005

Flash player + Yahoo toolbar? waz wit dat?

My 2 cents on this issue that is currently making flaming rounds on the net.

When I worked at Citibank here in Japan as the intranet admin I remember exactly how hard it was to get them to upgrade even to Flash player 6 from 5. There were a lot of things I wanted to add to the intranet using flash, but unfortunately at the time we were still sitting on Flash 5... and the only reason that was installed was because it was bundled in the browser on install.

Every single tiny piece of software that gets installed in a Citibank computer is rigorously tested inside and out for weeks. Then it goes through some process with people who have no idea what the software is, only to have to then be approved by some other department that says "umm.. so what is this again?" kind of idea.

The fact that I had to put up with version 6.22 of the player for over a year is testament that:
1. The flash player is generally hated by all thanks to the nasty advertising and lame animations that have built with flash
2. The flash player is untrusted as nobody really knew what could be done with it
3. Corporations are just looking for a reason to NOT install something

Only after another major court hearing was I able to upgrade to 6.65... umm.. but I wanted player 7.19.... *sigh*

Thanks to this nice new additive that can CLEARLY ONLY BENEFIT Macromedia, there are going to be a lot of frustrated administrators/designers/developers in corporations out there. No corporation in their right mind will EVER allow that in. I feel their pain at this time, and don't envy them.

Though on another related point, I now have to convince our clients that this is not an issue, when it comes up, (or is an issue and "this" is how to get around it etc..) Something that is going to use up more of my time, and not help either of us.

So here here to MM making even more money at the cost of their own clients.

It really really makes me wonder what they were thinking when that decision was made.

Posted by Graeme at March 4, 2005 06:36 PM
　



Comments

Hi Graeme, I may have missed it in there, but are we both agreed that people on a controlled intranet would almost certainly never see the HTML page which includes mention of Yahoo Toolbar?

(It's IE/Win visitors who actually click a "GetFlash" link, and who don't already have that toolbar, who see the checkbox in a page on the Macromedia site. There's nothing in the installer, and the security policies on controlled intranets doesn't usually let people install ActiveX Controls from website pages like that in the first place.)

The story has started to feed on itself -- if even you got the above impression from reading a news source, then I have a feeling I'll be typing a lot tomorrow.... :(

(What's worse, I just read a reference on my own weblog about a possible impersonation, where someone claimed that a post from me on another blog used bad language. I'm still trying to find what this person may have been referring to, but along with the false "Macromedia bundles Yahoo" assertion, I'm a bit concerned at some of the stories floating around.)

jd/mm

Posted by: John Dowdell at March 4, 2005 08:58 PM

Hi John,

That's some quick damage control ;) You've got your work cut out for you on this one I think.

Unfortunately, most corporations I think use win/IE. Citi was Netscape centric for a while due to the fact that it was less prone to viruses, but Netscape died so...

As for the installer, you are correct in that the corporation must have the actual installer and in most cases the user will not go to the site to install. In the odd situation though, some people would be able to install which caused.. problems.

Though, when the corporate admins that go and try to find out info about the flash player and see that MM is trying "include" other software with the DL of the player.. it most definitely doesn't look good.

Either way.. it's a bad idea and really doesn't reflect well on MM at all. They should have looked elsewhere for that extra coin as a lot of companies/people rely on the player being what it was up until this point. Just the player. Instead, now we have to worry on what else MM is going to try to stick in with the install.

A matter of trust really.

Just my 2 cents though.

Posted by: Graeme Bull at March 4, 2005 09:06 PM

I'm with Graeme.. My fear is that it sets a precedence for MACR and they'll think that it's ok to add more "optional" installs along with the Flash Player.

I would bet that the losses due to bad publicity and the loss of respect/trust from corporate clients will outweigh the small profits they'll get from the people who aren't paying attention and mistakenly install the Yahoo toolbar when they install the Flash Player (and then cuss MACR and un-install both the Flash Player AND the Yahoo toolbar).

Posted by: mike lyda at March 5, 2005 12:56 AM

Out here in the sticks, we are still trying to educate businesses on why a free Geocities (yahoo) website is not considered a professional level business site. If anybody out there disagrees, sorry, I know some people have real sites hosted off yahoo and all, but theyre not the same thing.

It should most definitely be an opt in, not an opt out. I personally dont use anything from Yahoo, and dont see how this benefits developers or customers, only someone up there who made a deal.

I also do a little CISCO work on the side, and trust me, most intranets arent locked down nearly the way they should be, mostly because of system interoperability. This ensures many business computers will begin to show up with yahoo toolbars which may well inturn lead to the player being removed. Believe It!

Posted by: TCS at March 5, 2005 01:14 AM