Shoutbox

Hello everyone,

as some of you already know, an Messenger Plus! update was recently released due to compatibility problems with MSN Messenger 6.2. About a fourth of my users generally use the auto-update within the first week of an update, which is transformed in about 1,000,000 installs in only 7 days (added to the usual 80,000 daily installs)... that's a lot of people.

If you're a long time member of the Messenger community, you already know that some people regularly complain about the optional sponsor embedded in Messenger Plus!. In general, a couple of replies pointing to Add/Remove Programs solves the situation but when the volume of daily installs increases by 1500% (because of an auto-update), sponsor complains are getting more visible and, each time, some people start to wonder if there's some truth behind these allegations.

I'm writing this message to make you realise that the complains are always the same, they are just more concentrated on some occasions. Any long time user will tell you the same thing: the sponsor is NOT installed as long as you don't click "I Accept" and "Install" in the installer. More than that, the agreement window is ALWAYS displayed, whereas you launch the installer yourself or Messenger Plus! launches it as part of the auto-update procedure. If you don't trust my word, trust the facts: the Messenger Plus! forum would be dead and buried 10 feet under the ground if a million of people simultaneously got an unwanted adware program installed on their computer after upgrading their little Messenger add-on.

That being said, I'd like to talk about another topic, a new one, introduced by MSN Messenger 6.2. The latest update of Messenger Plus! was released the same day MSN Messenger 6.2 was released. You may want to notice that the installer of MSN Messenger 6.2 now proposes to install the MSN toolbar as well as the MSN search engine. Both of these options are actually enabled by default... these features are actually very similar to what my sponsor installs with the exception that in my installer, nothing is enabled by default. If so many people do install my sponsor by mistake, what do you think about the 150 million MSN Messenger users who will be prompted to upgrade the same way, with the options ticked on by default?

Don't get me wrong, Microsoft has all the right in the world to include this kind of option in its Messenger client; after all, this is one of the best (and harmless) way to generate some money on the internet nowadays (Yahoo, Google and a lot of other companies already realised that a long time ago). I just hope that people will not mistake my sponsor's toolbar with Microsoft's one. As both new versions are available at the same time, it is easy for less experienced people not to make the distinction. Just rest assured that the option to install the sponsor in Messenger Plus! is not checked by default, in any circumstance. Some people will always complain after installing Messenger Plus! because they clicked "I Accept" too fast in the agreement window; some of them will even insist on the fact that no option was offered to them during installation. These people are actually just too proud to admit that they missed the option because they click on every button too quickly. Once again, I understand that such mistake can happen and that's exactly why the Messenger Plus! uninstaller is designed to remove every single byte of the sponsor's program (please, stop trusting Adaware or similar programs blindly, they only makes things worse in a lot of situations).

I invite all of you who have some doubts to give Messenger Plus! a try, you'll quickly realise that it doesn't install any virus, trojan, or other kind unwanted software. Making my users happy is all I ever wanted, I'm not about to destroy more than 3 years of trust by trying to make a quick buck... that would be pretty dumb don't you think?

Thank you for reading,
Patchou