Stocks Gadget Removed from Windows 7 RTM

no-stocks-gadget

When I installed Windows 7 Enterprise RTM on my workstation, the first thing I noticed is the Stocks gadget was gone. At first, I thought probably they removed it from the Enterprise edition. However, it’s not the case, they removed the Stocks gadget from all editions of Windows 7.

According to a thread in social answers at Microsoft.com, here is the reason why they removed it.

“Dow jones, who is the provider of the “Dow Jones Industrial Average” quote feed to the Win 7 in-box stock gadget, wants a EULA agreement to be shown and accepted for any user before they can see the data from their feed in the stock gadget.

While investigating further …, we came to know that the total number of DJ indices that we would have to block is close to 3100, and not 1 as we had thought earlier. This has an impact on the design. Specifically, the solution that we were considering earlier of using the configuration file (config.xml) becomes risky, and may not suffice. ”

Thus the following was implemented:
“- remove stocks gadget on fresh install on Win 7
– remove stocks gadget when upgrading to Win 7 from Vista
* remove stocks gadget code from %program files%/windows sidebar/gadgets
* remove gadget from settings.ini, so that if it was present on the desktop befor upgrade then it must not show up
* stock gadget must not show up on the gadget gallery after upgrade
– remove MSN money query framework in WLSrvc.dll, so that any gadget was using this earlier (in vista, or earlier Win 7 builds) is not able to use the same after this change.”

It seems like they are serious about removing this particular gadget. If you want the stock gadget, you have to install 3rd party gadgets. I tried several ones from the online gallery. I finally settled on this gadget called “Stocks3“.  It does not look as good as the original one, but it’s more flexible. I am keeping it for now until I find a better one.


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5 Comments

  1. Re: Dow Jones. The licensing policies they have surrounding their index values are absolutely absurd.

    The licensing fees they charge are exorbitant, into the thousands per month to distribute a single widget. Most of the widgets that you find which have their information on them are unlicensed. Eventually they send take-down notices to widget providers and the DJIA mysteriously disappears from the widgets you are using.

    It’s sad that this horribly backwards company caused Microsoft to drop the widget entirely, it was a pretty nice widget.

  2. After I installed win7 upgrade on Nov. 1st, I noticed the stock widgets was mising. I went to my laptop that is still using Vista 64 showing blank stock widgets. Oct. 30th, it was the last time it was still working under Vista 64 but not today. I was wondering why until I read this post here. I’m really disappointing about it cuz it has been a very useful tool to keep a close eye on my favorite stocks that I invested into. I hope, the owner of the stock widget would changed their mind and bring it back.

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