Google is trying to reclaim the high ground in add-in software through redefinition.

It's doing this in a good cause, namely its own. It wants to keep enhancing its Google Toolbar. It wants to add new features that use cookies and caching and your web logs to personalize what the Internet does for you.

But whatever its own motives, others are using the same concept in far more sinister ways. They push pop-up ads that block others' sites. They steal data on your Internet usage and sell it. Or they hide what malware inside their packages.

All this infects the credibility of every software vendor, including Google.

But can Google really turn things around?

It's going to be very hard. Utah has already begun prosecutions based on an anti-spyware act it passed this month. L.L. Bean has begun sending out lawyers in the absence of firm law, suing Gator (excuse me, Claria) for popping-up competitors ads on its page.

Google's proposal, put out by David Krane (one of my favorite Google-ites), now director of corporate communications, is a set of play-nice guidelines. Tell what you're doing, make removal easy, don't mix with programs that don't follow the guidelines, and take naps when you're tired (oops, that last is Robert Fulghum's).

You know what's missing from this, don't you? An enforcement mechanism. An outfit signs on to the guidelines and then violates them at the first sign of financial trouble. Then, maybe, they change their name when the muck gets really bad and try to sign-on under the new name. Meanwhile the garbage is still out there in the world.

The damage done by spyware and malware is just so enormous that we can no longer trust the industry to police itself. Sorry, Dave.