As reports that Google will acquire FeedBurner for $100 million abound, the search engine’s ears were likely burning for another reason this week: a handful of security bloggers were accusing the company of working with Dell to install spyware-like software on PCs.

David Ulevitch, OpenDNS’ founder and CEO, caused much of the stir on Tuesday when he posted that “Google and Dell have teamed up to install some software on Dell computers that borders on being spyware. I say spyware because it’s hard to figure out what it is and is even harder to remove.”

In short, when users type incorrect information into their URLs, they’re redirected to a page filled with sponsored advertising links by the tool installed on Dell PCs. Fair game or not?

Here’s some reaction from around the web:

Jon’s Network:
“If the craplets weren’t enough to keep you from buying computers from Dell, Sony, HP et al., this spyware-like behavior by Dell and Google might convince you. The average user doesn’t even notice this though, so who cares. Vendors will keep doing this because it works.”

Marcin Wielgoszewski at ts/sci security:
“They’re simply redirecting invalid DNS requests to their own page. When you use OpenDNS, they redirect mistyped queries to their own page as well. OpenDNS is having a fit because it’s competing with their revenue stream, powered by Yahoo.”