[ryandrake]

I’m not a Skype user or an Edge user so I don’t have a dog in this particular race but in general I can’t stand it when these “software barnacles” latch on and get bundled with the software I actually want.

We just had a similar article related to this kind of bloatware yesterday [1]. When you’re in a big company and your job performance is measured by something like “number of installs,” well by golly, you’re going to advocate for anything that juices that install rate. When you’re measured by “number of daily active users” you’re going to use notifications and spam to beg users to use it. And in the extreme case of your project being ignored by users and you need to justify it’s very existence, you’re going to pull out all the tricks and dark patterns you know, in order to force people to have/use it.

It’s a shame that success in software tends to me measured with these vanity metrics. It’s a big reason we have so much unwanted software that gets bundled with wanted software, and why so many apps beg you to use them.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20803817

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804737