Winooski - 10:44 am on Nov 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

Wow, I'm floored that other people have confirmed the appearance of StumbleUpon links and logos on their Google homepage.

It's more like what various FireFox and IE add-ons do with a Google results page.

Tedster, so there are other plugins that alter the appearance of Google results, without Google's consent, with impunity? I've totally missed this fact. Any examples?

I'm finding it hard to believe that Google would allow its pages to be significantly altered without contesting it in court (emphasis on the "significantly", i.e., done in a way that makes it look as though the injected content or design element originated with Google itself instead of with the third party that's injecting it into the user's browser).

Here's why I say this:

1. The Federal Trade Commission has a slew of suits against would-be spyware companies [cdt.org].

2. One of the "behaviors deemed unfair and/or deceptive by the FTC" in at least one of these suits is "Installing software onto users' computers that makes substantial modifications to the Internet Explorer Web browser (including the home page and default search engine) without users' knowledge or authorization." (both quotes from the page from the Center for Democracy & Technology linked-to above.)

3. In two of these cases, the FTC apparently has successfully levied fines and gotten the third parties to halt the unfair or deceptive behavior.
- In Federal Trade Commission v. Odysseus Marketing, Inc., and Walter Rines [ftc.gov]: "The FTC charged that the defendants' spyware intercepted and replaced search results provided to users who queried popular Internet search engines."
- In Federal Trade Commission v. Seismic Entertainment Productions, Inc., SmartBot.net, Inc., and Sanford Wallace [ftc.gov]: "the FTC alleged that both operations hijacked consumers' computers without the consumers' knowledge or approval."

4. I've just reviewed StumbleUpon's current terms of service [stumbleupon.com] and privacy policy [stumbleupon.com], and, from what I can determine, there doesn't appear to be any verbiage to the effect that they might change a search engine's homepage to include their logo and a link to them.

I know that it's one thing for the FTC to take on spyware vendors and another for a private web site owner to sue a software vendor for editing its pages on the fly, but still, I think there's enough precedent from the above that, were I Google, I'd be calling out my lawyers immediately.