Letter to General Manager Search, Lycos

May 9, 2002

Txx Wxxxx
General Manager, Search
Terra Lycos, Inc.

Txx:

Chris Ekberg brought to my attention that we have done (or will be doing) a deal with gator.com and are considering additional involvement.

I would like to express my extreme displeasure that we are dealing with this company. As I'm sure you must know, the Gator "spyware" stealthily replaces the ads websites display with their own, hijacking the display and depriving the original website of the ad revenue. Gator is frequently installed without the knowledge of users, tracks personal information without their permission, and hijacks ad revenue from websites.

Although I understand the pressure on you to generate revenue, I think that making deals with this company will turn into a loss over the long run. Being associated with underhanded companies like Gator will hurt the public's view of Terra Lycos. Also, by supporting this business model we are legitimizing it's use and propagation that will hurt the entire advertising industry.

I walked around the 3rd floor yesterday and talked to 40 of my colleagues. I asked them if they would like to add their names to a general letter in protest of our involvement with Gator. Their names are listed below. Chris Ekberg also collected a set of reference material about the outcry on the web about Gator that I include at the bottom.

Sincerely,

Gray Watson
Manager, Infrastructure Engineering

Cc: Chris Ekberg

Signatures

People who asked to have their names added to a general letter of protest on Lycos' dealing with Gator.com, in sorted order by first name. It is interesting to note that of the people that knew about gator at all, more than 90% immediately asked to be added. Also, there were 4 people who said they had found Gator on their computers and they didn't know how it got there and they had real problems deinstalling it.

Bill Cava, Chris Ekberg, Colin Schuster, Doug Beeferman, Ed Schwab, Eric Lofstrand, Eric Waal, Gray Watson, Hugh Everett, Jim Birmingham, Joe Pranevich, Jon Whitney, Ken Cary, Louie Alderton, Mark Modrall, Mike Davis, Pat Crowley, Rich Houghton, Robert Elsner, Scott Raven, Scott Money, Tim Shenton, Venkat Kolluri, Will D'Amato

Top of page.

Other Blog Months:

2008:  Dec 
2007:  Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr  May  Jun 
2006:  Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul  Aug  Sep  Oct  Nov  Dec 
2005:  Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul  Aug  Sep  Oct  Nov  Dec 
2004:  Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul  Aug  Sep  Oct  Nov  Dec 

      $11 Domains   Free Spam Protection   Memory Debug   $100+ Million Jackpot