[wanderingstan]

In the mid-2000's I had a new co-worker who had recently come from Gator[1]. Even not working there any longer, he maintained that their software was an incredible product and that the injected ads were "yeah, a little aggressive, but they're fixing that!"

His rationalization powers were shocking.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation#Gator

[stuart78]

From that Wikipedia article: "Gator's end user license agreement attempts to disallow its manual removal by prohibiting "unauthorized means" of uninstallation."

Reading the word Gator really took me back in time. Never worked on that stuff, but it brought back the visceral pain of sitting down at a friend or inlaw's computer to find Gator or one of its peers installed. Each time the internal debate: to simply remove it, to try and explain why it is bad or simply to ignore...

[ex-adware]

Pretty much! And the funny thing is that every company is always "fixing that" until they make the advertising less aggressive and revenue drops 30%. Then they turn the dial back up.