Please don't confuse monopolistic activities to crush the competition with designing products to force you into doing things a certain way for your own good.  It's a revolting abuse of logic, and, considering your obvious political leanings, intellectually dishonest.

Microsoft has done plenty of shady stuff, but packaging IE with Windows was as anti-competitive as putting ketchup in a squeeze bottle, and it's even less relevant to forcing unnecessary updates on you that delete software from your system without even a notification because they're potential security problems.  They're not even a particularly crooked company, IBM was far worse when it had their position in the market, announcing products they weren't even working on to bankrupt small software companies before they could release and then buy them out.  Apple is just all kinds of magical evilness today, they routinely file vague patents on other peoples work and then sue companies, who are some times the actual originators in the first place, that come anywhere near it.

What he said....

What's so damned despicable about this debacle is MS citing 'security concerns' with previous OSes.  Several tech writers have denounced this move as scare tactics and quite dishonest.  The truth is, MS wants everybody using Win 10, and will stop at nothing to make that happen.  Well I have some bad news for MS, I'm switching to a Linux OS when support for Win 8.1 is taken off the table.

Not in my world it isn't!  I have no intention of being corralled in MS' version of a walled garden, or of copping forced updates up the arse, having everything I do on my PC recorded for whatever purposes MS chooses.  No, and Apple is no better.  Both companies have agendas that consider not the user, and neither can be trusted, less so now that MS has adopted Apple's business model.

Now that would be a turn up for the books.  Apple has a patent on it and is currently looking to sue MS.   With a bit of luck they'll drag it all out and bankrupt each other with impossible (to meet) legal fees.

Thing is, there are alternatives out there, and there will be plenty of Win 10 users switching to one of them when they get sick to the teeth of MS' bullying and standover tactics, being forced to cop shit they neither want or need.  The fact that they keep reissuing Win 10 upgrades, often disguised as important and/or critical updates, to users who have already declined it several times is proof enough that MS does not and will not accept no for an answer.  Just imagine what it will be like once trapped inside MS' most controllable OS, where they call the shots andensure users toe the MS line.

Anyone who wants that is welcome to it, but Windows beyond 8.1 is not for me.  I will still use Win 8.1 when support ends, just not on a net-connected machine, just as I currently do with OS-X on my Mac Mini.  Yeah, I got pissed that Apple used updates to delete various non- store apps and devices, so the Mac Mini got cut off from the net.  Now when I want updates for it I download them on my main PC and move them over via data tranfer cable.

Apple has been doing that for decades, claiming others material as its own, and now MS has adopted a very similar business model, don't be at all surprised to see it behaving in very much the same way.  One company is as evil as the other now.... God forbid they ever joined forces.

I honestly saw less than 0 appeal in downgrading from Windows 7 to 8, even 8.1.  A higher version number is not an upgrade if it loses features I like and replaces them with others I find unappealing.

Yeah, alot of people didn't like Win 8 or 8.1, but I got my first copy for practically free and never looked back.  Once Start8 was added there was little difference to running Win 7 for me.  That doesn't mean to say I  didn't like 7, just that I enjoy running 8 more.  However, the 'downgrade' to 10 is not one I'm willing to make, not today, not ever.

Nope, if I'm gonna dabble with the 'Dark Side', it's gonna be with a domninatrix dressed in Darth Vader-like black leather.

I recently downloaded Linux Mint - Cinnamon version. I want to see if I can run it while still having 8.1 and 10 on my laptop. One more toy to play with. 

It depends.

For people like you and me who have the knowledge and ability to select and download a different browser, it's not anti-competitive.

But for the vast majority of consumers who either don't know about alternative browsers and/or don't have the skills to choose an alternative, it is a defacto anti competitive move.

Consumer ignorance is not the fault of MS, but it's disingenuous to take advantage of it - just because it's legal.

Just because something is legal (or not explicitly illegal), doesn't make it ethical.

Exactly, and Microsoft has crossed the line, using every legal or not explicity illegal method to foist Win 10 onto as many machines as it can.

Sadly, there is nobody in a position of authority in the US with the balls to pull MS up on its 'less than honest' tactics regarding Win 10. 

When I say that I don't want Win 10, it don't mean I'm sitting on the fence, or that another more forceful 'offer' will make me change my mind.  What it means, Microsoft,  is that I DON'T Fechen want it.

Hopefully somebody over there at MS will read this and put an end to reissuing Win 10 upgrades/downloads to people who plain don't want it. 

Get it through your thick heads, not everybody wants it.

I switched to 8.1 and went to Windows update. There were 12 optional updates, no important or recommended ones. However I did find these...

KB3123862 - updated capabilities to put W10 on your machine...

KB2976978 (which was repeated a second time) - compatibility update to see if your machine can handle W10...

KB3035583 (sound familiar) - puts the 'get W10' app on your machine.

I hid them all. Pays not to have auto updates enabled. Lol

Until you can't.  

MS had better not pull that forced update shit with 8.1 or I'll disconnect it fom the net and switch to Linux for my primary OS somewhat sooner.  I won't be bullied into accepting crap I either want or need... I don't give a fech hòw big Microsoft thinks it is.

Glad Daiwa understood that GWX can and very well might be changed...as was in the source quoted in the OP (last paragraph).

"Your" ignorance is not someone else' problem.  Ever.  The aforementioned squeeze bottle is exactly the same scenario.  When Heinz started selling ketchup in squeeze bottles, someone, somewhere, stopped selling their superior squeeze bottles because no one cared to look for them, or pay for them, when they were already getting one for free without the hassle of filling it up in the first place.

Once you decide it means anything that gives you an advantage someone else can't achieve, anti-competitive essentially boils down to everything a company does.  If you make a better product, have better advertising, lower costs, anything that makes yours a better product, you're hurting your competition.  Stardock is anti-competitive because Start10 is sold with computers, a better product than other options, etc.  There is no end to the insanity when you go down this road, and that is why the anti-trust laws were gutted following the insane over-reach against Microsoft.

It hurt their competition to package the browser, this is unavoidably true.  It was not an anti-trust issue.  Assuming they really did, and I put nothing past them or government so I can't say either way without doing far too much research, punishing companies that didn't only sell their software was an anti-trust violation.  That is where things change from simply being better, to coercing other companies into exclusive arrangements.  You can exploit market dominance, if only temporarily, to kill superior competitors by wiping out their outlets.  Anyone that doesn't go along becomes uncompetitive and goes under, and there lies the immoral, and currently illegal, trust.  An agreement between two or more companies to exclude another from the market.

This is talk, entirely.  Full support for Windows 7 is over, as scheduled.  They are no longer supporting new hardware, just as they did with every previous iteration, and are only doing security updates for the duration of extended support, just as they did with every previous iteration.

When Microsoft released XP with SP2, they included countless drivers for hardware that came out post release, their automatic updates included these optional drivers as well.  Having the SP2 disk made the typical installation much easier because many devices simply wouldn't work until you got your disk out or went online to fix them.  It did not mean the drivers didn't exist, you simply had to go to those third parties to get them.  Anyone that releases major hardware in the next several years, and doesn't release a Windows 7 driver, is committing suicide.  The only thing happening is what always has, Microsoft wont be going through them, verifying their stability, and adding them to the update packages.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/gwx_control_panel.html

MS is a defacto monopoly and used it's position in the OS market to include it's browser, giving it a nearly automatic and substantial position in the browser market. That's a fact. 

All the other things you mentioned in your reply had nothing to do with what I said. And putting words in my mouth so you could win an argument is a slimy straw man debate tactic...Just go ahead and show me where I said or implied that SD was anti competitive, or that having lower cost than your competitor was anti-competitive, etc.

Interestingly, you didn't respond to my "legal but unethical" comment. Can I assume then that you believe as long as a company can pull a fast one on the consumer, whatever they can get away with is OK?

About 7 or 8 years ago, the maker of Thomas trains was found to be using lead in their toys. I don't recall how it was discovered, but if they hadn't been, would it still have been OK to make those lead filled toys despite the consumer's ignorance?