File under 'storm in teacup, not many hurt'. Following our previous post, which pointed to uncomplimentary articles about Browzar (a small executable wrapper for Internet Explorer, which sends you to its own home page so you can be shown ads for money), there's been more action.
Most of it though hasn't been very useful. For the roundup, read this ArsTechnica article (see, sometimes we do like their stuff):
In the style of the "telephone" game that is news reporting on the Internet, this statement turned into a warning that Browzar contained "adware," which then later morphed into "malware."
We're shocked - shocked - at the idea that online news reporting might be anything but rigorously fact-checked at each iteration.
So what's the real deal? Browzar's search engine portal does indeed display sponsored links from the search engine company Overture (now part of Yahoo), but they are clearly marked as such. ... Does this qualify as "adware"? If it does, the definition must be meaningless, because it would apply equally to Google and almost every other site on the Internet.
And:
A more legitimate criticism of Browzar is that it is providing a "solution" for a problem that is already addressed by all modern browsers. Every browser allows the user to delete cached files, browsing history, and cookies, merely by going into the appropriate Internet Settings dialog box. ...[and] the Macintosh-only browser Safari has a "Browse privately" menu option, and the cross-platform browser Opera has a single "Delete private data" menu item.
Our conclusion: Browzar is still best avoided, not because it's malware (it's not) but because it doesn't do anything you can't already do better elsewhere. Opera, for example, is free and doesn't get attacked like Internet Explorer.
