About 2\/3 (67%) of IncrediMail’s income comes from Google searches and advertisements. So Google is IncrediMail’s lifeblood. But now it seems there are rumblings that Google may soon terminate its contract with Google, maybe as soon as January 31, 2013. (Google has banned IncrediMail before — \u00a0for six months in 2010).<\/p>\n
The speculation is that Google, whose policy is not to deal directly with companies who try to trick users, now may believe that IncrediMail (Perion) is doing just that with it’s IncrediMail email program and the bundled SmileBox (a photo-sharing adware app) and SweetPacks, which began as an instant-messaging application with a variety of emoticons, and has now added a registry scanner, a spelling and grammar checker, games, and a video converter.<\/p>\n
Perion’s (IncrediMail’s) CEO Josef Mandelbaum basically called users of IncrediMail “complainers” and inferred they were ignorant (“some people just don’t know how to remove anything from their computer”) and also indicated IncrediMail targets “second-wave users”, i.e. old folks.<\/p>\n
IncrediMail is nearly impossible to install; it requires a litany of steps to remove it. It’s confusing for the average computer whether they’re a “second-wave” user or not. And removing IncrediMail does not remove IncrediBar or Smilebox or SweetPacks which have their own crippled uninstallers.<\/p>\n
We stopped making stationery for IncrediMail a long time ago. We simply won’t directly or indirectly support a product that tricks users by bundling useless software with it. Further, we won’t support any product which summarily changes the users home page and default search engine without their consent or even their knowledge.<\/p>\n
While IncrediMail may not be malware, yet, but it is trickware. It takes advantage of its users, by bundling programs and adding them users’ computers , by being very difficult to remove, by hijacking users’ homepage and preferred search engine, in short — Perion (IncrediMail) targets users who are more likely to be less computer savvy than younger computer users.<\/p>\n
The excerpts below are taking from an article by Vince Martin writing for the Seeking Alpha investor Web site. His article is based on a segment which appeared recently on Bloomberg TV called “The Disconcerting Story Behind Perion’s Success”.<\/p>\n
“…Mandelbaum (Perion’s CEO) dismissed user complaints, telling the Bloomberg correspondent Johnson that “some people just don’t know how to remove anything from their computer and that some people are just complainers.” But those dismissals seem somewhat disingenuous. While the label of “malware” appears far too severe for Perion products, it also seems the company makes it difficult for users to remove all aspects of its software. Reviews at CNet’s Download.com show a number of complaints about the difficulty in removing all aspects of Smilebox even after using the program’s “Uninstall” feature. Multiple reviewers also noted difficulty in canceling during the company’s free trial period and thus facing a $39.95 annual fee.<\/em><\/p>\n The difficulty in un-installing Smilebox appears to have been built into IncrediMail’s version 2. Multiple reviewers at CNet and BetaNews commented that the uninstalling issues simply had not occurred while using IncrediMail’s initial version. Indeed, even the link on the bottom of the IncrediMail home page shows a litany of steps needed to remove not only the IncrediMail program, but the IncrediBar toolbar, and to keep the software from setting the company’s MyStart as the default search provider. (It was precisely those resets to which Google referred back in 2009 when announcing policy changes for search partners.) Meanwhile, the customer support contact options are significantly limited; the “chat” feature is simply an automated “FAQ”-based system, while direct phone contacts are unavailable. Direct contacts with technical support appear limited to posts in the user forums and follow-up private messages through the site…<\/em><\/p>\n …In short, Mandelbaum’s effort to blame ignorant and\/or difficult customers seems insincere. The company itself in filings and press releases consistently trumpets the fact that it targets “second wave adopters,” or as Bloomberg’s Johnson somewhat dismissively called them, “old folk.” They are precisely the demographic who would have trouble removing an extension from Google Chrome or deleting a .bin file in Windows Explorer. And yet, both IncrediMail and Smilebox appear to force their customers into these series of steps for a simple uninstall…”<\/em><\/p>\n Please take the time to read the entire article online<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span> It will open your eyes to how some company perceive their customers and how company’s turn trickery into fortune at the user’s expense.<\/p>\n We stopped making stationery for IncrediMail a long time ago; maybe now you can see why we did. We won’t lend even tacit support to a company like this or a product like IncrediMail.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About 2\/3 (67%) of IncrediMail’s income comes from Google searches and advertisements. So Google is IncrediMail’s lifeblood. But now it seems there are rumblings that Google may soon terminate its contract with Google, maybe as soon as January 31, 2013. (Google has banned IncrediMail before — \u00a0for six months in 2010). The speculation is that Google, whose policy\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1655,1461,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5376"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5378,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions\/5378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}