It tickles me that Superfish is a DFJ-funded [1] start-up based out of Palo Alto. Reporters are focussing on Lenovo's Chinese lineage. Yet this bubbled up out of our backyard, from our own lack of diligence (or scruples).
[1] Edit: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the $4 billion Menlo Park VC firm that backed Baidu, Hotmail, Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter.
Looking over the executive team of Superfish (Which, creepily, refers people to their linkedin profiles - presumably so they can see who is looking at them.) I see that their Chief Product Officer (Cmpt. Science from Stanford, so obviously knew what was going on) is formerly from Zynga. Mark Pincus is (infamously?) known for his comments about how sometimes, when you are small, you have to do all these terrible things that you are really ashamed of, just so you can get big and never have to think about doing them again. In the case of Pincus, he was referring to a the zwinky toolbar that earns money by redirecting web searches to advertisements - oddly close to what just happened with Superfish/Lenovo.
[1] Edit: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the $4 billion Menlo Park VC firm that backed Baidu, Hotmail, Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter.