A few months ago, Yahoo! aquired Konfabulator, software that creates little mini applets on your desktop. For several months, nothing happened. Then a new version arrives. It has a bunch of changes and improvements to the various widgets, along with the expected integration of various Yahoo! functionality into the calendar/mail/weather widget.
All fine so far. So I download, and start the install wizard. A couple of clicks in I see the above. Not only does it want to change my homepage, but my default search engine, and install something called Yahoo! Central which (if you click the above image) wants to manage my internet settings and get alerts about updates to Yahoo! software. Uhmm….
No
I’m pretty sure that this isn’t as hugely evil as it could be, but I’m pretty sure that this involves installing crap into my control panel, putting more icons in my tray, and randomly spitting up “news items” coughpopupscough through the software. Maybe I’m wrong of course, but at this point I’m not going to risk it because quite frankly I’d rather not have more stuff messing with my system than needs to be.
Yahoo! has actually been a bit more obnoxious lately, doing things like bundling their IE toolbar with the shockwave plugin download, giving you no choice but to install it if you’re downloading the software. This makes me worried because they are also buying up relatively useful sites like Flickr and Del.icio.us. So far they’ve only added the ability to login to Flickr with your Yahoo account, but that is a recent aquisition. What’s in the words for 5 months down the road to “brand” these sites like they have Konfabulator?