Open Letter to Tripod, regarding the Search Companion

Dear Tripod,

An annoying sidebar has begun popping up every time I browse to a Tripod site. I'm sure it happens to other readers, browsing to my site as well.

The occasional popup ad: OK I can live with that. Banners ads, no problem: I'm happy that you are able to profit from my site traffic. But infiltrating my browser and changing the way it works is just too invasive. Cut it out!

At the very least give readers an option to disable this "feature". (Telling them "click the X" absolutely does not cut it: as soon as they browse to another page in my web, it comes back.)