Internet giants grab at your desktop

A growing number of software tools install more than you asked for

Last week I downloaded WinZip, the file compression utility that everyone used until Microsoft built Zip support into Windows. When you run the install, a dialog pops up offering Google Toolbar and Google Desktop Search, with both options defaulting to Yes. It feels like a cheap trick, where you sign up for one thing and get something else that is both intrusive and unrelated, but this is becoming standard practice for free downloads like WinZip.

A more prominent example is Macromedia's Flash player, which sneaks in the Yahoo toolbar during setup unless it is foiled. Now Sun is joining in with the announcement that Google's toolbar will be bundled with the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). "What Netscape did for the Java runtime, the JRE can now do for the Google toolbar," said Sun's Scott McNealy at a joint press conference.

Google's main business is advertising. "Toolbar users use the advertisers in more sophisticated ways," said chief executive Eric Schmidt, which I guess is another way of saying that they spend more money. It does seem disappointing that Sun intends to sidle this vehicle for advertising onto your desktop when what you require is a runtime engine to make some piece of software work.

We have entered a new phase of combat, no longer the browser wars, but the toolbar wars. Yahoo, Google and Microsoft all have toolbars and will do anything to get you to install them. The forthcoming Windows Vista has a sidebar which does not look like it will co-exist easily with Google Desktop. This will be a headache.

It is worth reflecting on why typical Windows boxes are in such an appalling state in many homes. This is not just the work of viruses, but of uncontrolled installation of many pieces of software, each wanting to run on start-up and claim a corner of the desktop. In some cases this renders a machine almost unusable. Best practice dictates that software should be narrow in scope and do no more and no less than is necessary.

The announcement we really expected from Sun and Google was not about bundling deals, but the next phase in web 2.0, the web as a platform. Google has shown it can do web email and offer huge amounts of online storage. Why not Google Office, using Sun's work on Open Office to add document creation and management, providing a true internet workspace and hitting Microsoft where it hurts the most? I'm sure this is in the plan, but not yet.

The idea seems to be to get Open Office, JRE and Google Toolbar on every desktop, and then to talk about what you can do with those pieces. That's fair enough, though undoubtedly others including IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, are watching this same space.

There is also a slew of unanswered questions including some concerning security, offline working and enterprise integration, to mention just three major issues.

Innovation in making use of the power of the always-on internet is one thing. But installing additional stuff onto overloaded desktops by exploiting hapless users, is quite another.

Here is my request to Scott McNealy. You love the word "Open", as in Open Office and Open Solaris. Please extend it to include software installations that are open and honest. Surely Sun can do better than WinZip.