Google Takes a Stand Against Spyware

Google has been a long-time anti-spyware advocate. Now they've made a clear stand against the spyware problem by announcing a set of software principles:
http://www.google.com/corporate/software_principles.html

If you have no idea what spyware is - it is software that surreptitiously installs itself, or hidden components of itself that monitor your activity, open pop-up ads, record credit card numbers, and worse. Usually it pretends to be something benign - a free game, a system tool, an "optimizer" - but all that is a trojan horse to show you the company's advertisers.

There's a great free tool for checking and removing these types of programs: Ad Aware.