I saw an Ad for that once.

Isn't it one of those products that claims it can magicially 'fix' your cheap, beige box running Win95?

Or I /may/ be mistaken, their website is blocked at work.

can anyone prove me wrong?

Sounds like CrapWare to me though.

Let me get this straight.

Google are a internet search company who have criteria for being included on /excluded from their search engine.

This other company have not paid a single penny to Google to be listed.

Surely therefore if Google decide to take them off their listing its purely Google's decision and totally within their right. It's like the Landlord of my local deciding to bar someone, no reason needs to be given.

Any company that relies on a completely free search engine as its primary method of marketing and advertising is surely heading down a dead end road.

"As a result of Google's actions, these customers now see displayed only the advertisements and websites of third parties, including competitors of Ascentive..."

And reviews that say it's scareware crap with links to better free software.

They now use the name FastAtLast for their scam as well.

Ascentive, would you like some cheese to go with your whine?

Its not as simple as Google being able to proactively decide who they are going to list in their search engine. They can refuse to sell Ascentive adwords, however to hide it from their searches would be considered a tort. (Ascentive could have a case under US tort law.) Google could be recognized by the US courts as a monopoly. (They may be a monopoly, however the courts haven't declared them a monopoly.)

If Google censors companies or websites from its index, then it would lose its immunity under I think CDA. The telcos have 'Common Carrier' status that gives them a certain amount of immunity because they don't censor their network traffic. Note that the CDA reiterates and clarifies that the immunity is strengthened by allowing them to apply filters to their network for the health of their network and systems, along with limiting 'indecent' materials.

I just googled Ascentive and voila, their website came up at the top of the list. Along with a bunch of pages indicating that the company is a scam/malware company.

I don't know if Google changed anything since the suit, or if Ascentive's complaint is that if you search on key words looking for security or anti-malware software and not containing Ascentive that they are not found. If this is the basis for their lawsuit, then they will definitely lose.

(Google's search algorithms are proprietary and considered 'trade secrets', so there could be some criteria that forces Ascentive to the bottom of the list. Its very possible that they tried some SEO optimization that google didn't like.)

Fail for the lawsuit.

Surely if Google is a search engine that indexes the internet then to discriminate against companies it doesn’t like is anti competitive?

"Googled" Search Engines - Top Sponsored Ad was for Bing, top "real" Ad was Dogpile (with Google at #3)

"Binged" Search Engines - Top Sponsored Ad was for AdCentre (Whatever that is), top "real" Ad was for searchenginewatch.com (With Dogpile at #3)

Google didn’t feature at all on Bing search results, go figure! I was going to "bing" for "Google" but got scared!

Last I checked Google will automatically filter out websites it deems to have "malicious content that could be harmful to your computer". Although no one is pointing a gun to your head and forcing you to use Google it does come as the default search in Firefox, Opera, and Chrome and has the largest number of users compared to others so it would be interesting to see where this lawsuit goes. It wouldn't be the first time scumware vendors sue to get themselves classifed as benign despite evidence indicating otherwise (Zango).

I've seen these "FinallyFast" commercials on TV and the actors are definitely portraying your typical noob who knows nothing about computers other than how to send an email or click on an icon to lauch a game. Therefore, this is their target consumer. Funny how they show the software running on a macbook when in fact this software is only offered for Windows.

I was going to install this in a VM with Vista to try it out but I said fuck it. Any AV that makes you pay to remove malware is an AUTOMATIC SCAM. Download trial versions of NOD32, Symantec, Kaspersky etc (well-known AV progs) and they are fully functional if only for a limited time but they will remove malware currently on your system.

Sorry folks these fake AV progs aren't going away especially with the slap on the wrist doled out to the perpetrators of AntiVirus 2008/2009.

Penguin because these AV scams are never targeted to *nix users, probably because not too many noobs run *nix.

So Google will automatically filter out websites it deems to have "malicious content that could be harmful to your computer", hmm?

Not wanting to be too much of a troll here, but how many times have Microsoft been guilty of releasing software that has caused problems - and I don't even mean such things as saying "old" hardware will "run" certain Operating Systems... and I'm not counting leaving gaping holes in apps that allow (or even encourage) unwanted software to run on a machine (and YES, I AM sure I do NOT want to participate in Microsoft's "quality" control process where Windows tries to send details of every sodding fail back home - even if they are nothing to do with Windows, or Microsoft, at all. Allowing those nice, helpful chaps at MS-HQ to see what I have on my machine counts as "harmful" to me, thanks all the same) .

Not too many of ANYONE runs *nix - because its utter gash. Microsoft deserve to be in front because they make OS's for people sans beards and with social skills.

*nix - it's for Goths and Emos with too much spare time.