Pronto Shopping Search: Friend or Foe?
The team here were running the rule over a semi-recent innovation in shopping search, the Pronto Shopping Search toolbar. It’s owned by IAC, the company behind Ask.com (AskJeeves to you and me). It’s basically a comparison search tool, but unlike existing products it’s installed in your browser as a toolbar.
Such products are traditionally associated with adware, perhaps unfairly in recent times as things like the Google toolbar have become such useful additions to our surfing experience. It is perhaps this scepticism towards downloadable toolbars that encouraged Barry Diller, IAC boss, to launch a standard price comparison website to place the toolbar into the background. And there is some evidence that the website is doing well, with it apparently becoming the top growth website in the world for March 2008.
But what of the controversial toolbar? Obviously from a retailers point of view it raises concerns that the application could hi-jack a transaction by encouraging consumers to leave for a cheaper competitor. The company has previous form as they own Smiley Central and the MyWay speedbar that proved controversial due to their tracking of browsers surfing behaviour. Presumably in order to offer ‘better offers’ to consumers the Pronto toolbar has to do the same so that alone raises concerns for me.
What do you think, is the Pronto shopping search bar a friend or foe to the online shopper?
May 16th, 2008 at 5:07 am
[...] Adi added an interesting post on Pronto Shopping Search: Friend or Foe?Here’s a small excerptPresumably in order to offer ‘better offers’ to consumers the Pronto toolbar has to do the same so that alone raises concerns for me. What do you think, is the Pronto shopping search bar a friend or foe to the online shopper? Bookmark. [...]
May 18th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Sounds all a bit too much like spyware for my liking. Not something I’d personally use.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:05 am
In a similar vein is Minggl - http://www.minggl.com/ - a company that provides a toolbar to download all your social graph data to your browser where it’ll be a lot more useful to you. The move seems to allow advertisers to target advertising based on friend interactions. Whether that’s a positive move of course is open to debate.