Some Google product I reinstalled recently (maybe GTalk?) had a tagalong. It really surprised me (and made me angry too.)

It does make sense in the case of Babylon to install all these stuff.

A toolbar is very reasonable, same goes for a search engine. (maybe not the deault, but it's OK to have a Babylon search engine).

The homepage is taking it a bit too far though :)

Toolbar, maybe.

Search engine? How does this benefit me?

At least it lets you choose whether or not to install these components. It could just do it automatically and let you find the changes later.

@Greg - yes, but the problem is that the default quick installation includes all of the junk. One should have to choose to opt into junk, not out of it.

It's getting even better. I know of an administrator in charge of automating installations who contacted Babylon for a site license. The Babylon salesman said that there were already 62 users using the software as shareware from the company's IPs.

Babylon phones home regularly. It uses IE's proxy settings, so that this feature is not only targeted at home users. AFAIK it also reports usage details, not only installation, but I need to be updated before I can confirm that.

@Markus: Barf...

@Ayende: This bothers me with everything because my wife just runs default installs and suddenly she has like six custom toolbars on her IE and she really only needs one (or none). Then she comes to me for help and I take a look at her computer and want to tell her to do something different, but like you said, the defaults opt you into all of that CRAP.

Of course it seems like every installer is rude these days, from Google to Live Messenger to freaking Live Writer. They think you want and need everything that they have to offer and it seems like the average consumer usually doesn't know they don't need it until it slows down their computers.