Microsoft Gives MVP Award to Adware Pusher

An anonymous reader writes "Ed Bott reports that Microsoft has given an MVP (Most Valuable Professional Award) to an individual known for peddling Adware via his Messenger Plus program." From the article: "So how did a guy whose primary business involves installing adware become an MVP? That's what Christopher Boyd, a Microsoft Security MVP better known as Paperghost wants to know. Boyd isn't the only MVP who has a history with Patchou. Sandi Hardmeier, a current MVP in the Internet Explorer category who specializes in the fight against malware, has written three long, angry pages about the messy adware that 'sponsors' Patchou's product."

Comments

Good business

[pestilence669]

Consider for a moment, that keeping the XP experience as crappy as possible, will only make Vista look that much better. Trashing obsolete products is good for business - good for microsoft. If XP becomes a heaping pile of garbage, users might be compelled to upgrade to the next future-heaping-pile-of-garbage sooner.

Actually, this is probably the result of a stupid, but really hot, marketing intern making decisions.

Astroturf?

[whoever57]

Comment above appears to be from a brand new user, who has only commented on this story. One might suspect that Sphonix is Patchou himself or someone closely related to Patchou.

Re:Astroturf?

[emilv]

But he IS right. It's VERY clear what will be installed. I have used Messenger Plus since version one point something (I just switched to a MacBook and are not using MSN Messenger anymore, but before that I used to have the latest versions of both MSN Messenger and Messenger Plus). I have been following the discussions and controversy when Patchou begun the sponsor program and I have been following the changes in the installer.

It doesn't look like an EULA anymore, and you have to specificially enable the sponsor program by your own free will. It's very clear that you don't have to enable it to use the full version av Messenger Plus.

The article is not fair on this point.

Does windows count as adware? (n/t)

[Anonymous Coward]

Does windows count as adware?

Re:Does windows count as adware? (n/t)

[Al Dimond]

It depends on how you define adware, but... Windows Media Player is part of Windows, and last time I used WMP (quite a while ago, admittedly) its main screen was a bunch of ads. I think the default home page in IE is or once was some silly MSN lowest-common-denominator gossip-news page with ads on it (I might be wrong about that, but it is the default IE home page on lots of computers I've worked on). And from what I gather the guy that was named an MVP here originally wrote a program to remove a banner ad from Windows Messenger, which means that Windows Messenger is adware. I don't know of any common GNU/Linux software that acts like that. Maybe Firefox, which has a Google page as its home page. Though there aren't any ads directly on it...

So switch to something else

[tkrotchko]

I've been involved with PC's since 1979 and I'll tell you there has never been a better time to switch since about 1984. Back then we had Macs and Amigas. Then for about the past 10 years, there hasn't been a good technical alternative to switch away from Microsoft.

Today, the choices are more and better than at any time since the personal computers were invented. Vista is the final nail in the coffin for me. I'm switching to the Mac. I've had them for years, but in my opinion, Apple has finally gotten the recipe correct. Powerful, beautiful OS, Great software, well priced hardware etc etc. Heck, you can even get MS Office for the Mac. I've been using some of the new Linux distros, Ubunto, Suse... these are all great systems that have lots of software and are more than just toys for tinkerers.

If people switch to Vista it's because we want to, and not because they have to. So for people complaining they have no choice, they're not being honest with themselves. The choices are there. If you put yourself into these handcuffs it's your own decision.

I've reached my limit with MS.

Re:Adware makes you evil?

[sg_oneill]

Which article? Theres alot of them out there, and they all appear to be saying the same thing.

Also, whats with all these people defending it with similar bad spelling? Wierd.

Re:Was worried there for a moment...

[kirun]

It is possible to do ad-supported software that isn't evil (e.g. the older versions of Opera), however, it's the 99% of adware that makes the other 1% look bad. With drive-by installs, popups that don't identify their origins, non-working uninstallers, theft of banner ad space from websites, rewriting of affiliate links, insertion of unauthorised sponsor links, uninstallation of competing ad engines, hijacking of homepage and search functions, self-restarting processes, etc. people can be forgiven for being suspicious of any given advertising module, even before it starts leaking personal information.