A leading Firefox executive has attacked Apple, Google and Microsoft for installing web browser plugins without the user’s permission.
Asa Dotzler, who heads Mozilla’s efforts to promote the browser, said all three are ‘evil’ for not asking Firefox users for permission to install plugins that offer support to other applications.
‘When I installed iTunes, in order to manage my music collection and sync to my iPod, why did Apple think it was OK to add the iTunes Application Detector plug-in to my Firefox web browser without asking me?,’ he asks on his blog.
‘Why did Microsoft think it was OK to sneak their Windows Live Photo Gallery or Office Live Plug-in for Firefox into my browser (presumably) when I installed Microsoft Office? What makes Google think it’s reasonable behavior for them to slip a Google Update plug-in into Firefox when I installed Google Earth or Google Chrome (not sure which one caused this) without asking me first?’
He likens the practice to the way that virus makers sneak software onto PCs.
‘These additional pieces of software installed without my consent may not be malicious but the means by which they were installed was sneaky, underhanded, and wrong.’
Dotzler says that while Mozilla could do more to prevent this practice, they shouldn’t have to for ‘trustworthy’ software developers [his quotation marks].
