
Turning The Tables On The Google Toolbar & Disclosure Claims - alanh
http://searchengineland.com/turning-the-tables-on-the-google-toolbar-disclosure-claims-63596
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gojomo
Wow. Google's Toolbar opt-in URL-tracking dialog has become more generic,
indirect, and insistent over the years. It no longer includes the red 'yada
yada' text Matt Cutts referred to last week.

On IE, it doesn't even offer a 'No' but rather an 'Ask Me Later', as if you'll
have to agree eventually, so you might as well agree now. Kinda sneaky! (Do
you think they A/B tested different wordings and went with the one yielding
the most opt-ins?)

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jamesbritt

        On IE, it doesn't even offer a 'No' but rather an 'Ask Me Later', 
    

I freakin' _hate_ shit like that. It's from the same play book as, "Are you
still cheating on your wife?"

It's not just _kinda_ sneaky, it's bullshit sneaky; it's not a yes/no option,
it's yes/yes for two related, but different, things.

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Xuzz
Facebook did the same with friend requests. Actually denying a friend request
is a 15-minute-long affair that, I would bet, almost nobody actually does.

It works, though. "Not Now", most likely, has replaced "Deny Request" for
good.

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jamesbritt
I pray for the day when technology has advanced to where we can be offered
_three_ choices.

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DufusM
Matt Cutts' point assumes a very naive point of view, I believe. From
his/Google's point of view, it is fairly disingenuous for Microsoft to use
Suggested Sites data for Bing ranking - however, there's quite a few examples
(from gmail's current "ads based on not just the current email" to how
DoubleClick logs Google AdSense pages a user visits to better target ads to
them), where the actual benefit to a company does not line up well with the
user's understanding at that point. Clarifying all these points in red bold
text would probably change our Internet browsing behavior a lot.

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moultano
This is unfortunate. The google toolbar opt-in was one of the things that most
impressed me about the company when I first joined.

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drivebyacct2
It's still opt-in, is still fairly transparent about what enabling PageRank
does, and still points to the full privacy policy.

Personally, I would have blown through the "Read this carefully" screen as
another EULA. Even with the additional warning, and I'd bet other users do
too. On the other hand, having it ask me, after being installed, about an
incremental additional feature that could be enabled, but shares additional
information in a quick easy to consume blurb of text... I'm much more likely
to read it and ponder what clicking "yes" will do.

