I believe this ecosystem is simply an extension of the prior systray ecosystem wherein small, sometimes free windows applications would bundle a "helper" app that would basically spy on, and advertise to, the end user.
This resulted, among other things, in an almost universal degradation of performance and usability of Windows XP/Vista for ... our parents and grandparents, basically.
This resulted, among other things, in an almost universal degradation of performance and usability of Windows XP/Vista for ... our parents and grandparents, basically.