I haven't seen any of these in the wild yet, but I'm pretty careful about what I download. Curious that there doesn't seem to be much comment from the big download sites about this. It will be interesting to hear if this impacts them.

I find it interesting that, every time I try to download something, there is a "automatically download Chrome" check-box already checked on the screen. If I want Chrome, I'll get it directly, NOT as an unwanted attachment to something else!

Wonder how far this program will extend and whether it will kill off this parasite add-on software business model. I know these guys need to make some revenue, but this seems an underhanded way to do it.

I can't see this as being more than an annoyance to adware and BHO pushers. The same type of warning was offered years ago by McAfee until they made a few deals and lost the trust they had built for their SiteAdvisor. Some of the oldest parasites now advertise on TV as respectable businesses.

It is a hypocritical stance against adware when you read that adware is big business whose chief partner has been Google:

(adware) made nearly $1.6 billion in revenue and $311 million in operating income in 2014. "Substantially all of the revenue" from that segment comes from a deal with Google.

- from the ZDnet article about Oracle stuffing Adware in with Java updates: [webmasterworld.com...]