Those toolbars that nobody installed.

[monkfailz]

In the early 2000s when I was a young man, these toolbars were rampant. These toolbars were everywhere. It is corona-2020 now and I know these toolbars are dead. Nothing you install these days would ever ask you to install a toolbar now.

I never installed any of those toolbars back in the day. They just take up screen space. I never installed that Yahoo! toolbar, Google toolbar, Ask toolbar whenever it would ask me to.

Did anyone install any of those toolbars back in the day?

But I'm just curious to know.

Stay safe and wash your hands.

[Djuntas]

Maybe once by mistake when you clicked to fast through an .exe installer. At least back then privacy issues were more obvious and annoying - Now people cant comprehend it, and nobody gives a fuck about privacy anymore...sad.

[Asrialol]

I still remember visiting my mom quite a few years ago and she was on her laptop. Not only did she have 5(!) Toolbars installed, she had 50+ tabs open.

Usually the toolbars got installed when you installer something else. Have the consumer having to check boxes to agree with the ToS and click next, and slap a toolbar checkbox in there.

[Morae]

I remember how I accidentally once installed a toolbar when I quickly went trough some instal of another thing. It was difficult to get rid of. I didn't find an official way to remove the said toolbar, but a malware scanner decided it was malware and removed it for me eventually.

[Lollis]

They were useful to the point of being mandatory in the mid-late 90s and early 2000s before there was a proper search function built in to the web browsers.

[Kumorii]

Yes by accident and I just uninstall it instantly.

[Zephire]

I've seen people with more toolbars and things than viewing space in a browser. When asked why, they reply "should it not look like that?". They don't read things when installing, they assume it should be like that and they have no idea how (or that you can) remove them. They also never use them. One person even complained that his browser was crap and thought it was just a scam tool due to all toolbars...

Forward to today... hello Apps and the permissions everyone gives them. Unsure what's worst.

[XDurionX]

These Toolbars were aimed at people who were bad with computers.

[Yunru]

This trash keeps getting placed in some free versions of programs and you gota be very carefull how you proceed. Some of installers are even designed in a way that switches yes/no and you can easy missclick.

[chazus]

On a weekly basis I still get customers who have 2-3 toolbars, even on chrome or firefox. Also some people don't recognize the idea of closing tabs. I've come across people who have accumulated 100+ tabs open and don't understand why their system runs like crap. They just open browser, open tab, move on, minimize browser.

[Hellobolis]

i think i had the google one before they baked all it's functionality into browsers as default feature. still use bookmarks bar and searchbox everyday.

people without a toolbar were people who went to the actual google website to google stuff.

on the flipside: toolbars are also the reason i ALWAYS click advanced installation to this day.

[Sagenod]

They were useful to the point of being mandatory in the mid-late 90s and early 2000s before there was a proper search function built in to the web browsers.

Right isn't t it true that for a long time the address bar only accepted URLs and in order to search by keywords you had to use a search engine? Good ol' AskJeeves

[unbound]

I didn't, but some of my relatives did...mostly because they would rapidly click through various install programs that added them.

One of my relatives browsers was so loaded that very nearly half the screen was filled by toolbars. They were so used to it that they didn't ask me to help with the toolbars, but to look into why they kept getting all the popup ads...

[Afrospinach]

They were useful to the point of being mandatory in the mid-late 90s and early 2000s before there was a proper search function built in to the web browsers.

Yeah I had them installed and I think this was why.

[DeltrusDisc]

Honestly, don't remember, but I think I may have on accident once or twice. Not afraid to admit it. /shrug

[Blackmist]

I think I installed the Google one, back when there was no other way of searching other than going to the actual website.

It wasn't like now where you just type any old bollocks into the address bar and it figures it out.

[Twoddle]

No I didn't except to mess around with in the internet cafe.

I also remember the All Advantage toolbar that showed ads and took up an inch of space along the bottom and earned you something like 5 pence/hr as long as you clicked on it from time to time, plus another 1p/hr for any gullible friends you could get to install it as well. PC's back then would grind to a halt each time it refreshed its banner or when you clicked it.

[meheez]

Nope.

I see teenagers these days install porn malware, and all sort weird popups somehow lol.

[Gaidax]

I think I eventually back then got baited by some installer to install one, removed it after some days.

There were these annoying installers with jebait sneak installs of this crap with sneaky checkboxes buried in actual legit list of options or misleading "do you want to install" pages. You would inevitably fall for one.

[sarym13]

I still remember visiting my mom quite a few years ago and she was on her laptop. Not only did she have 5(!) Toolbars installed, she had 50+ tabs open.

Usually the toolbars got installed when you installer something else. Have the consumer having to check boxes to agree with the ToS and click next, and slap a toolbar checkbox in there.

Lamo foreal I remember going to family and friends houses in the past and just seeing the crazy amount of bloatware they have and just feeling astonished they actually use their computer like that.