First we hear about the ‘helpful’ pre-installation of Google products onto new Dell computer, and now Google have announced that they will be bundling their Google toolbar with downloads of the Shockwave player for Internet Explorer. This is acceptable, as the toolbar will be an option, but I am still not a fan of practices such as these.

The Google blog post on this subject is ridiculous.

We’re excited to partner with Adobe to make these features available to their users, and look forward to finding other ways to work together.

Downloaders of the Adobe shockwave player are perfectly capable of downloading the Google toolbar themselves if they choose to. Such bundling deals are not helpful for Adobe because, whilst providing some money, they annoy those installing the player and have a negative affect on Adobe’s brand and they are not good for Google because of the vast sums of money they must pay. A sensible and sustainable approach would be to continue to offer great functionality over and above the core functionality of IE, and for it to be so well known that everyone downloads it anyway. They could even advertise it on the Google homepage.