Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best way to "clean up" a dirty industry that adds no value is to starve it until it dies.
Why do you think it is impossible for it to add any value?
Why does it add value?
What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
121–130 of 188 posts
Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#122I dunno, 1. and 2. seem like a cop out to me. When crappy freeware Windows installers provide a checkbox (checked by default, of course) to opt out of Bonzai Buddy or a million Ask.com toolbars or some bullshit malware scanner, they are still shitty and sketchy, and it's disappointing to me to know that YC is now behind a company that makes such software. And saying this crapware is popular does little to assuage my…
[deleted]
Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#123The standard practice of making decline option available is a nice way of deceiving non-technologically inclined users. But IM and related companies are here to make money. Most of the above points are the way how it works in Windows ecosystem.
Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#124Paul, I'm one of the two people you're indirectly addressing with this HN post. (The second is Long Zheng.) I wrote here: http://www.withinwindows.com/2013/01/16/installmonetizer-qui... Long zheng wrote here: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20130115/y-combinator-is-fu... I'll respond to each of your items individually. 1. OK. 2. Maybe. Or more likely users are mistakenly installing these applications because the off…
3. It's included in the EULA of the app itself. They modify the installer. 4. I don't think there is any claim that this can be fixed instantly. 5. This is not for OSS-using libraries -- that's totally cool. Everyone uses open source. What they've banned is people wrapping VLC to make money off software they haven't written. That's not cool.
3. Have you used IM? :)
4. It's in the privacy policy, so it's supposedly live. Or are you saying the policy is wrong?
5. That may be the intent, but did you read the policy? It's a one liner banning all OSS.
Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're working on something new, and all the office hours I had with them were about that. They're not even in our database of companies as InstallMonetizer but as the new thing. (I'm not sure if I can say the name because it may not be launched yet.) I knew they had some previous product that was called a Windows installer, but I don't think we ever talked about what it did. The whole world of Windows software seem…
You're a much more patient and understanding person than I am, pg. My initial reaction to pretty much every comment here is "Peanut gallery -- start your own incubator, or just accomplish one noteworthy thing in your life." As a non-pg entity, I feel vicarious indignation. Who are these random nobodies who think they're entitled to question how/where you spend your time and effort? And the people who get up on their…
I've earned several hundred thousand dollars directly from customers by doing honest work. I guess that means I can say that taking advantage of a person's lack of computer expertise to crowd his computer with toolbars, hijacking his search efforts, and making his web browsing slow to a crawl just to make a buck is very sleazy behavior.
Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#126Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, I always feel these "choices" are like being sold an extended warranty. It's presented as a choice but is "strongly recommended", non tech savvy users are likely not sure what "recommended" means in this context. Does it mean that the software might break my computer without it? Does it stop me getting a virus? Anybody who consciously decides that they want the ask toolbar on their computer can find the stan…
It's worse than that, actually. Experienced computer users interact with a computer in a completely different way from inexperienced ones; at some point, experienced users develop the ability to do some kind of fast cognitive relevance filter on the screen, so they know which UI elements they can interact with, which ones might be important, which ones aren't, and so on. Less experienced users can't do that -- they h…
Completely agreed.
Amongst my non-computer literate friends, many of them adopt the "click next quickly until the install starts or it stops working" tactic.
Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
This industry sounds dirty by nature, you can't 'clean up' spammers or prostitution either. Just because a pimp won't sell his girl to just any old John, doesn't make the whole act any better. It's people in the middle trying to make money off of someone else's hard work. It is really simple, just don't attempt to trick users into installing stuff they didn't want to download in the first place (anything outside the…
Well... I would like to disagree on your opinion about cleaning up prostitution. Over here in the Netherlands it seems to work just fine. If person A pays person B for doing intimate stuff that doesn't really harm anyone.
[deleted]
Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
The game is to get those people who aren't tech savvy, and PG knows and actively supports it. There literally is no way to do what IM is trying to do without somehow engaging in questionable behavior (reminiscent of Facebook in many ways)
> PG knows and actively supports it. I don't think this statement is really fair. If you read the previous post about this, he was clearly surprised and troubled, and he again seems troubled here. He also mentioned in a comment in this thread [1] that he didn't seem to know about InstallMonetizer, and that the team is working on a different product. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5093047
But not troubled enough to not make money off them.
Re: What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
#130I don't understand all the moralizing going on in this thread. VC is about funding the companies that could make a lot of money. When did we start expecting them to be the morality police? Sure, if YC wants to build up a reputation for funding "honorable" startups, then they can choose to do so (and will choose to do so to the extent that they think it makes business sense). The comments here that say "This might be…
I've never understood this line of reasoning. It is entirely within YC's right to fund businesses that a portion of the Internet find scummy. Shockingly, it's entirely within the rights of that portion of the Internet community to then whinge about them funding said scummy businesses. And it's YCs right to care, or not, about that opinion. Someone once wrote a blog post that had a paragraph on cheating (on your spous…
There are a bunch of people who believed that YC was somehow different from/better than tactics and behaviors exemplified by firms like Bain Capital. Some of those people are starting to wake up.