The town drunk gets job as school crossing guard
All computer users

What if your town hired the town drunk to be a school crossing guard? Would you feel comfortable if your children were in the care of someone who might be inebriated - and who surely wouldn't set a good example for them? No, you wouldn't.

But recently, Ask.com was lauded when they instituted a Safe Search for school children in conjunction with NASCAR - see "Ask.com Safe Search School’s program is doing very good, important work". "I truly believe that the Ask.com Safe Search School program is a program that could not only help protect kids from the dangers of the internet, but fundamentally change how we educate our youth, and how our children will become more internet savvy at a younger age." says the article's author John Lobdell.

Oh, really John? We wonder if it ever occurred to you that school-age children are Ask.com's prime target for its FunWebProducts bundle which includes such wonderful things as SmileyCentral, Popular ScreenSavers - including the infamous "bikini babes", Zwinky, and a dozen or so other programs that all start with Windows, slow down a user's computer, hijack their searches, collect data from users by tracking links clicked and sites visited - and funneling searches to Ask.com via MyWebSearch (as well as MyWay.com and IWon.com) and then using those statistics to show that Ask.com is a viable competitor in the search engine business where it competes (poorly) with Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search. Actually Ask.com is ranked 4th or 5th depending on who you believe.

So Ask.com's partnership with NASCAR and its Safe Search program is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to go after the market it targets most - and that market is children. Apparently Ask.com, is so sure that its good, wholesome image, will continue on unscathed. Ask and FunWebProducts' parent company IAC/Interactive Corp has done a great job of deftly avoiding justifiable criticism by craftily keeping Ask.com and its Ask Toolbar and FunWebProducts from being lumped together as products promoted by the same billion-dollar company.

In a rant we wrote a while back we wrote:

"If Ask.com/IAC entices children (and adults) with colorful, free "Smileys" and then installs 13 other programs including the Ask bar (also known as MyWebSearch Toolbar, MySearch Toolbar, MyTotalSearch Toolbar, MyWay Toolbar, and other pseudonyms) isn't that deceit? If Ask.com has to resort to trickery to influence people to install their toolbar, isn't that deceit? If I advertise that I'll give you a free car and then require you (in fine print, buried in a 7500+ word legal document) to give me access to your house and all its contents in exchange for it, that car isn't really "free" is it? In the real world our common sense tells us when something is likely to be a scam. But for some reason people fall for scams on the Internet as if they were born yesterday.

Have we really reached the stage where competition among multi-billion dollar corporations and their hunger for wealth means that corporations like IAC/Ask.com are now throwing ethics and morality to the wind; and will now use whatever means they can to compete? IAC/Ask.com targeting children is not ethical or moral for a variety of reasons - not just for the obvious ones. And, Ask.com/IAC must think it's not ethically or morally right to target children either, because in fact, they deny they do it. And they deny it even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they do.

How this affects you should be obvious. And we hope you're beginning to see that the real issue isn't adware or spyware, the real issue is deceit. And deceit does not need an Internet convention convened to define it like the terms adware and spyware apparently do. " (See our original rant.)

No one wants to do research in this superficial world - apparently NASCAR was so enamored by Ask.com they probably really believe that Ask.com cares about children and wants to keep them safe on the Internet - by doing what? Showing them Bikini Babes? Enticing them with games? Dazzling them with talking smileys? All in a carefully planned dissimulation to get kids to install this garbage on their computers - and to funnel searches to Ask.com. Ask.com's search isn't good enough to compete with the others and apparently the only way they can grow the number of user for its search engine is by enticing them with baubles and gimmicks - and then surreptitiously funnel those users' searches to Ask.com through the MyWebSearch component of FunWebProducts. It all counts the same to Ask.com.

Everyone wants to believe what they see. More and more though, what you see is not what is actually there. Beneath  Ask.com's carefully manicured image, there lies deceit and badware called FunWebProducts which is a product criticized by tens of thousands on the Internet and removed by many top adware and spyware programs which Ask.com continues to promote to Children. NASCAR bought into Ask.com because of the image they project and now push Ask.com's safe surfing programs to kids. It's a shame that NASCAR has become an unwitting partner and is now helping Ask.com pander FunWebProducts and toolbars to kids. Safe surfing, my eye. Ask.com is the fox guarding the hen house. Ask.com got what they wanted - more kids to entice with their baubles. What Ask.com really wants it to grow up to be like Google.

Someday the truth about Ask.com will be exposed and then we'll watch Ask.com do some political maneuvering. Its executives will claim they had no knowledge of what their managers were doing - just like Wall Street execs blamed it all on those working under them.

Recently, at an IAC/Interactive financial meeting, Barry Diller, IAC's CEO was asked by a Goldman Sachs executive why FunWebProducts revenue shrank 10% in the first quarter of 2009. Rather than answering her honestly - more anti-spyware programs are removing FunWebProducts and consumers are getting more savvy about installing such garbage on their computers - he danced around the question in a delicate and deft - but typically executive way:

Jennifer Watson - Goldman Sachs

"Great. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question on Fun Web Products. They have been performing rather well, probably up until this quarter when it sounds like some of the queries declined there. Can you discuss some of the dynamics and how that contributed to proprietary revenue down 10% year-over-year relative to CitySearch and Ask?"

Barry Diller - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer IAC/InterActive Corp (IAC)

"Yeah sure, Jennifer. I think it's starting in the middle of last year, the back half of the last year we started to see a number of effects that it was a mix of external and kind of certain internal operational issues. I think the premise of Fun Web which is to provide great creative products in order to drive a toolbar download, continues to be a strong general premise but there is no question there's increasing competition for control of that toolbar and control of the other search experience through the browser and related affects.

So, there were a number of kind of competitive actions we think we've solved many of those. So the business was stronger in the last third of the quarter and into April than it was in the early parts of the quarter. And we look to launch new products and continue to drive these operational experiences around the search experience.

So, we think the business is still fundamentally sound but there is no question it's competitive."

IAC/InterActive Q1 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

Ask.com and its parent IAC/InterActive continue to promote FunWebProducts as wonderful addition to any computer, all while an increasing number of anti-spyware products continue to identify it as anything from "potentially unwanted software" to "spyware", "adware", "browser hijack", and "badware". WOT rates FunWebProducts as dangerous and SiteAdvisor offers a strong caution against installing FunWebProducts. Interestingly enough, both WOT and SiteAdvisor rate Ask.com "Excellent".  Pretty interesting, isn't it?

So now we have Ask.com partnering with NASCAR to teach kids about safe surfing. The town drunk helps kids cross the street - or worse your local drug dealer is giving a talk at your local elementary school. NASCAR was duped by Ask.com and now it is unwittingly promoting Ask's FunWebProducts to kids. Great way to increase your declining revenue if you're Ask.com. But not exactly what NASCAR had in mind when they were duped into thinking that Ask.com was really interested in helping kids.

And, if you have any doubt left that Ask.com and FunWebProducts are just parts of the same company kept separate by an elaborate ploy by IAC/InterActive read this :

"...Media & Advertising consists of our search properties such as Ask.com, Fun Web Products, and Dictionary.com, our local business, Citysearch, and our distribution business, which includes distributed search, sponsored listings and toolbars..." http://iac.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1679

Ben Edelman had it right when he wrote about Ask.com and FunWebProducts and so did we. Now, with NASCAR's help FunWebProducts has even easier access to children.

Maybe it's time you helped expose Ask.com for what they really are - part of a company who can't compete honestly by providing a better search experience than its competitors and instead stoops to gimmicks and deceit to prop up its fifth-rate status. But we know that what we write here isn't going to affect Ask.com or IAC/InterActive. We only reach a few tens of thousands of people. But if each one of you sent this article to just five friends and they sent it to five friends and so on - we'd reach millions of people in no time - and we would bet Ask.com wouldn't be able to hide behind its faux squeaky-clean image anymore.

Don't use Ask.com for your searches. Don't help Ask.com and its parent company target children with its toolbars and its FunWebProducts bundle. Ask.com's partnership with NASCAR in the Safe Search School Program only gives Ask.com greater access to audience it targets. That audience is children. Safe Surfing School Program is nothing but carefully crafted IAC/Interactive ploy that will give Ask.com more chances to push its toolbars and the FunWebProducts bundle to a greater number of children.

The town drunk is now your local school's crossing guard.