Dec 16, 2011

webmasters how to disable google related

From :http://www.lunarlog.com/google-related-privacy/
Reposting: I have not been able to find a way to disable Google related if you have not seen it you had better check out whats showing up on your website.



File a complaint here https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

Google Related Program and My Privacy Issues

I spent the last cou­ple of weeks updat­ing my main web­site Lunarstu­dio - mostly repro­gram­ming and adding new images. When updat­ing web­sites, most respon­si­ble web­mas­ters and design­ers will run their site through addi­tional browsers, oper­at­ing sys­tems, and test people’s reac­tions to new con­tent. I had a friend look at my site on Sun­day to see if she had any feed­back. Out of the cor­ner of my eye, I noticed a full-width bar appear at the bot­tom of my page on her mon­i­tor. My first reac­tion was “WTF”, fol­lowed by con­cern that some­how I must have uploaded mal­ware to the back-end of my site. The third option which was slightly more wor­ri­some is that some hack­ers got into my site. So I took a closer look, and the bot­tom left read “Google Related” (don’t install this.)

Now, I would never think Google would have released a tool­bar that cov­ered up part of the screen. Not only was it dis­tract­ing from the design I had worked so hard it, but it wouldn’t just affect me but almost every web­mas­ter and designer on the planet. So my next thought that it had to be some mal­ware she acci­den­tally down­loaded over the course of her Inter­net trav­els. Upon even closer inspec­tion, I noticed that it was serv­ing up adver­tise­ments and con­tact infor­ma­tion from com­peti­tors. So some­one look­ing at my site could see another image at the bot­tom of the screen, then decide to go to that web­site instead.

I started to look into this. Sure enough, it’s part of a new, 20-day old Google pro­gram which is a tool­bar exten­sion for Inter­net Explorer and Chrome. ArsTech­nica wrote a con­cise arti­cle on what Google Relate does here. While it might prove use­ful for some users, for web­mas­ters and those con­cerned with pri­vacy, this is an absolute night­mare. It rep­re­sents a major down­fall in Net Neu­tral­ity if this is allowed to carry on. *Aside* — some might argue that Google is not a tele­com, Inter­net Provider, or gov­ern­ment agency and hence doesn’t fall into the argu­ment of threat­en­ing Net Neu­tral­ity. How­ever, I should remind peo­ple that Google has men­tioned that it’s test­ing their Inter­net Pro­vid­ing ser­vices. Also, Android runs on many cell­phones as well as tele­com providers. They’re basi­cally in bed with one another.

There’s sev­eral dif­fer­ent and valid con­cerns, not to men­tion the legal­ity of this program:

1.It inter­feres with a per­son or company’s intended web­site design with­out their permission.
2.It poten­tially dis­tracts an end-user.
3.It slows down a person’s web­site load­ing time. The speed issue is prob­a­bly neg­li­gi­ble, but it’s still there with­out an owner’s permission.
4.It risks hav­ing peo­ple leave your web­site in favor of another. Hold­ing user reten­tion on a landing-page is tough enough, but this just adds fuel to the fire.
5.Due to peo­ple wan­der­ing off one’s web­site, it can jeop­ar­dize web­site owner’s busi­nesses and livelihoods.
6.Google is directly (or indi­rectly) prof­i­teer­ing from some­one else’s work with­out their permission.
7.This is poten­tially part of their AdWords pro­gram, which makes money off of advertisements.
8.It allows for Google to mon­i­tor your brows­ing habits, even when not using Google search. It’s basi­cally spy­ing on your activities.
9.It poten­tially opens up the door for fur­ther abuse.
10.It threat­ens Google’s com­peti­tors (Yahoo!, Bing, and other search engines.) If suc­cess­ful, com­peti­tors might also have to roll out sim­i­lar tool­bars or methods.
11.It could become a per­ma­nent part of Google Chrome.
Now, there’s some use­ful­ness to the end-user. It wouldn’t be fair for me to men­tion the Google Related neg­a­tives with­out the positives:

1.Pro­vides directions.
2.Pro­vides alter­na­tive solu­tions for some­one look­ing for a ser­vice or help.
I was almost pos­i­tive Google would pro­vide web­mas­ters with a method to take this off of owner’s web­sites through the use of META tags, but my searches for that method turned up empty. Instead, I came across other “unap­proved” meth­ods of using CSS code to dis­able the iframe, either by mov­ing the tool­bar off-screen, or by hid­ing the iframe com­pletely. Unfor­tu­nately, I tried these meth­ods and it didn’t work. It seems that Google caught on to web­mas­ters chang­ing their CSS code, and in turn updated their own to pre­vent us from doing so.

Since then, I’ve brought it to the atten­tion of some friends on Face­book, how­ever I think my con­cern has largely fallen on deaf ears which is under­stand­able. I’ve also writ­ten on the Google Forum where you can see there my con­cern is #6. Some might call it an over­re­ac­tion, but I think I’m fully jus­ti­fied here. The peo­ple report­ing this prob­lem is so low at the moment because Google Related is just start­ing to get atten­tion. This is part of the rea­son why I’m writ­ing about it on my blog — it’s to bring atten­tion to this.

My main issue is that Google is intrud­ing upon my work and busi­ness with­out per­mis­sion. The nail in the cof­fin is that they are also poten­tially prof­i­teer­ing with­out my per­mis­sion too. I think it’s just a mat­ter of time before Google is:

1.Sued by competitors.
2.Depart­ment of Jus­tice goes after them and tries to break up the monopoly.
3.Pub­lic out­rage from the web­mas­ters com­mu­nity gets out of control.
4.Or they dis­able it before it gets to any of the points listed above.
I hope I am overly con­cerned, and that Google dis­ables their new pro­gram almost as soon as it has started. How­ever, it blows my mind how this idea got past scores of lawyers, exec­u­tives, man­age­ment, and employ­ees at a bil­lion dol­lar com­pany in the first place. If you agree with my con­cerns, please pro­mote this arti­cle and also express your con­cern on the Google Related Forum. If you dis­agree, I’m still inter­ested in hear­ing your views

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