Earlier, in my blog “Grisoft AVG – Making The Web Safer … Unless You’re Running A Website“, I went over how Grisoft’s AVG product included a new feature, LinkScanner, that pre-scans search results from common web search tools like Google and Yahoo. And in its way, made the web safer for users.

The downside was, of course, a lot of fake traffic hits and bandwidth usage. Because every search result was loaded as if it were a normal user opening that web page, and then scanned, before a user ever clicks on the link. This, of course, drove a lot of paranoid delusional web site owners insane and created a lof of “the sky is falling” yelling across the web. Because, heaven forbid, their numbers were off.

Well, thanks to them, the internet is going to be less safe again. Instead of an invaluable technology being promoted across several security products and making the world wide web that much safer for the common surfer, it is instead falling into the annals of ignominy where no one will likely ever repeat the attempt. Congratulations squeaky wheels. You have won.

Scuttlebut is that in a few days Grisoft will terminate this feature of LinkScanner. It will still scan links as you click on them. It just won’t pre-scan anything for you anymore.

While I can’t say that I am entirely disappointed, as the concept seemed to need some form of tweaking, I also can’t say that I am in any way pleased. We should be making the web safer, not catering to people freaking out over marketing numbers. And instead of either side trying to communicate with the other and work out any reasonable form of compromise, we instead have idiocy and paranoia. I guess I shouldn’t expect anything better from people these days. Still, I can’t help but feel a blow against that age old wisdom, common sense.