Turning off the adstream is harder than ever

I've noticed that google is injecting more and more ad streams into their offerings. And while this is nothing new for big companies, I've also noticed they are getting harder and harder to turn off.

If you don't know what ad stream comes through the toolbar, it is a small subtle one, but a real one nonetheless. Go to the search and type the letter 's.' The dropdown of helpful autocompletes includes the normal history stuff but also (according to their website) "popular searches."

Now I'm not a demographer, but the word "Sears" was suggested. There is no way in hell that "Sears" is a popular search. Sears buyers and google users may not be completely mutually exclusive sets, but that intersection is smaller than that for about a hundred other 's' companies. That was an ad bought and paid for by Sears, Inc. This bodes ill.

Worse, to turn off this 'feature,' you have to click on the logo dropdown, choose options, goto the search tab and turn off the third checkbox (suggest popular queries). This was buried pretty deep.

This is really scary. Because it won't be long before you won't be able to turn it off. And another great service will have been made worse through the parasitism of marketers.

You`re right! Mine has Sear too! LOL sears must be dumping big bucks into advertising with google

hehe I wonder how i get listed there...