Google Partners With Adobe For Toolbar Distribution In Shockwave, Other Product To Be Named
Both
Adobe (PDF link) and
Google have announced a new deal where Adobe will distribute the
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer as
part of
Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player downloads. That was supposed to begin
yesterday, and bundling with other Adobe products will happen in the future.
Wait a minute? Weren’t Yahoo and Adobe buddy-buddies? Yes — a special
version of the Yahoo Toolbar is built
into the popular
Adobe Acrobat Reader program, through a deal
dating back
to October 2004.
In January of this year, Google began distributing Adobe Reader as part of
the Google Pack
without the Yahoo Toolbar being part of it. Google
told me (article for SEW
members) then
that the Adobe-Yahoo agreement only covered the distribution Adobe did.
So is the Yahoo-Adobe deal completely over? No. Reuters reports that Adobe
says that will continue:
Adobe previously included Yahoo Inc.’s toolbar as an option with the
Shockwave Player, Adobe spokeswoman Katie Juran said. Adobe still offers the
Yahoo toolbar as an option for its Flash Player and Adobe Reader products, she
said.
I just uninstalled Acrobat Reader and downloaded a fresh copy. I definitely
see the Yahoo Toolbar as part of the latest installation.
As for the Abobe-Google deal, the bundling with Google Pack wasn’t based on
payment, Google told me at the time. This latest deal is a financial
arrangement, though exactly how much money is changing hands is not disclosed.
As for the distribution, I downloaded Shockwave and got no prompt for the
Google Toolbar to be added. Of course, I already had it in Internet Explorer,
and that seems to be why I didn’t get a separate install. The
Shockwave FAQ suggests that you should see a separate install process and
that this won’t happen if you have the Google Toolbar already.
That FAQ also notes that the Yahoo Toolbar, previously bundled with
Shockwave, has now been dropped. In addition, it says that that third parties
that distribute Shockwave do not have to bundle the Google Toolbar with those
distributions.
The Google Blog post also says:
Starting today, Adobe is offering the Google Toolbar to its customers as a
free download — a great way to take Google search with you anywhere on the
web.Resources
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So far, that seems to be true within Shockwave. But it’s also a bit
overstated. The Google Toolbar on its own is not offered anywhere on the Adobe
products page, nor does a
search for "google toolbar" flag any page for those who just want the
toolbar on its own
The best, most specific information is part of the
Shockwave FAQ that I’ve mentioned. There is at least a direct link to the
Google Toolbar download page. But that’s much different that the idea the Google
Blog suggests, that people visiting Adobe might be getting a pitch for the
Google Toolbar on its own. Not yet, not so far.
Postscript Barry:
I was sent a screen capture of this in action, you can view the screen capture at tcal.net.