Live Essentials Update Rant

Today when I tried to log in to Live Messenger I was notified of a required update. The dialog said that I must install this update before I can log in, so it’s not an optional update. The update itself didn’t come as a surprise, I had read about it some days ago on the Windows Live Team blog, however they said it would be an optional upgrade.

During the installation I was presented with this dialog (I’m using the German version, so apologies to those who don’t speak German):

Live-Essential-Update

In the bottom left it lists the programs that will be updated. Besides Messenger there’s also Photo Gallery and Writer. These are all the programs from the Live Essentials suite that I have installed, and it’s understandable that their versions should be kept in sync, so no problem here.

But in the upper left are all the Live Essential programs that  have chosen NOT to install. And as you can see they are all selected for installation (except Movie Maker because it’s still in beta). Why can’t the Live Essentials installer remember and respect my previous selection? Why does it try to push these other programs on me when all I wanted to do is update Live Messenger?

This attitude continues in the final step of the install. As you may have guessed already, the installer wants to change my default search provider and my browser homepage:

Live-Messenger-Setdefaults

I can (and did) de-select those options, but why are they selected by default? I feel like the Live installer is trying to trick me into doing things that I don’t want to do. And all this just for a tiny Messenger update from version 14.0.8050.1202 to version 14.0.8064.0206.

Published Sat, Feb 21 2009 21:55 by stefan
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Comments

# re: Live Essentials Update Rant

This is the well known bloatware strategy from companies such as RealNetworks from years back. It is all about tricking people into installing bundles of stuff they did not ask for. It is all marketing mumbo jumbo, but sadly it works well. My bet is that 90% of the people installing this will not know what to do and will leave the settings as they are.

I am not as concerned with the software in question - since the app might not even be used even if installed (i.e. there is still a choice) - but the automatic changing of the search provider is a blatant display of typical Microsoft monopolism. In effect it is trying to direct people away from Google by sheer trickery.

Monday, February 23, 2009 2:05 PM by Stein Aasmul