Google Evil? Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler Says Yes Due to Plug-In Installation

Google Evil? Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler Says Yes Due to Plug-In Installation:Is Google evil? That’s a question some have asked in conjunction with Google’s relentless pursuit of data, but now Asa Dotzler of Mozilla is suggesting Google is evil due to the company’s sneaky plug-in behavior. In a recent blog post, Asa Dotzler claimed Google secretly installs Google Update plug-ins into Firefox without the user’s knowledge.

“What makes Google think it’s reasonable behavior for them to slip a Google Update plug-in into Firefox when I installed Google Earth or Google Chrome (not sure which one caused this) without asking me first?” Dotzler wrote. “This is not OK behavior.”

Unfortunately, the search giant’s behavior isn’t unique; Dotzler called out a few of Google’s evil peers as well.

“When I installed iTunes, in order to manage my music collection and sync to my iPod, why did Apple think it was OK to add the iTunes Application Detector plug-in to my Firefox web browser without asking me?” Dotzler asked.

“In my book, that fits the definition of a trojan horse. Yes, that is precisely how a trojan horse operates,” explained Dotzler. “These additional pieces of software installed without my consent may not be malicious but the means by which they were installed was sneaky, underhanded, and wrong.”