It was all going so well, until....

....I saw this post by Zango CTO Ken Smith, and I just had to reply.

For what it's worth, I actually agree with a lot of what he says. But then I get to this:

And so it goes. Forum postings like these are to be found everywere, but blog postings that encourage painfully manual uninstalls are common as well. Most egregious are the official-looking postings from various online security companies which insist (explicitly or implicitly) that Zango can only be safely uninstalled by shelling out $30 for their product.

....and then I am annoyed. Talking about scammy marketing practices, poor information, screwy security tool removal attemps and general Internet crapulence and then you go and LINK TO SPYWAREGUIDE?

Oh man, I am so posting there. This is what I left....

"You know, I agree with a lot of what your post says and I've even defended Zango in the past when blatantly false information has been put into circulation.

However, given the general tone of the piece - talking about spurious and / or misleading information - my eyes rolled when I saw you linking to, of all things, a page from Spywareguide with the insinuation that a FaceTime app, X-Cleaner, is little more than a 30 dollar ripoff demanding payment as the "only" way to remove a Zango application without using Zangos own uninstaller.

X-Cleaner actually attempts to uninstall an unwanted piece of software/adware/whatever with the products OWN uninstaller first, before resorting to ripping it out by other means.

Furthermore, the Free version of X-Cleaner actually does remove something related to Zango without payment, Zango Messenger, according to one of my researchers.

So not only do we *not* attempt to bypass your uninstaller and thus break your application via a borked removal where possible, we *don't* demand cash to remove every single one of your products either.

In fact, the page you link to doesn't even *mention* downloading an application, or paying, or anything ELSE for that matter.

Yet here we are, linked to in an article talking about misleading information, "official looking postings" and poor uninstalling practices.

I think its entirely fair for the Spywareguide page to inform customers what applications remove the program mentioned, don't you? It's hardly like the page is beating you over the head with BUY THIS NOW though, is it?

So again, of all the crappy applications, spurious marketing gimmicks and generally poor pieces of information out there that you could have linked to, why did you decide to run with a link to Spywareguide in such a context?"