I rebooted this afternoon due to creeping system slowdown caused by the usual culprit (Microsoft stuff leaking window handles and memory, particularly Exploder).

When the system came back up I was greeted with something about my free AVG 7.1 expiring soon. WTF? It normally updates itself without any huge fuss. Why is it saying now that it will need manually updating or die shortly after Christmas?

At the Web site I quickly found out why. The update (AVG 7.5) does have a free edition, but it's really not obvious. The following happened at the Web site after clicking the link from the scary warning dialog.

• The page loaded -- thankfully in Firefox. Too damn many things load stuff in IE even though that is not my "default browser" selection in the system.
  
• Prominent are links to pay versions of 7.5, the version being pushed to replace 7.1.
  
• Nowhere is there a plain link to the free version, even though that is what I am using and the most likely upgrade path is to the free 7.5 and not a paid one.
  
• Browsing about to "downloads", and "products", and "home user", and so forth turns up plenty of links to paid Grisoft products.
  
• Searches for e.g. "personal", "free", etc. comes next. The search results pages all look alike, no matter the query: a batch of links to the AVG Faq, with the same title and excerpt text. Blindly I pick the top link and don't see much of interest there.
  
• I was going to resort to a Google search scoped on the AVG site when I saw a page looking something like this:

ANTISPYWARE PRODUCTS
This paid software for home users
That for enterprise
Educational discount license blah blah

FIREWALLS
This paid software for home users
That for enterprise
Educational discount license blah blah

BLAH BLAH
This paid software for home users
That for enterprise
Educational discount license blah blah

YADDA YADDA YADDA
This paid software for home users
That for enterprise
Educational discount license blah blah

<font size=-5 million or so> avg antivirus free edition</font>

Of course, the tiny "free edition" link hidden at the bottom of the page leads to a page with a lot of snazzy box photos and links to paid editions again, with a tiny link to "download free edition". This actually leads not to a .zip or .exe file but a comparison chart with a load of scary red Xs for the free edition. One of these is actually downright misleading -- there's an X for Antispyware, and although the free AVG antivirus lacks antispyware functionality, there's a (separate) free AVG antispyware app. So it's not an outright lie, but it's not really true either -- it just means you need to perform two downloads and installs instead of one to have that feature.

The download itself seems to have worked without a hitch. Once I finally found it, that is.

Point is, they seem to make a big point of trying to:

• Make people get this particular update from the Web site, where they can
  
• Make you unsure there even is a free edition anymore in the hopes that you'll pay -- it wasn't mentioned at all on the landing page.
  
• Make it hard to navigate to the free edition
  
• Try to upsell you at every turn.

I don't recall them doing that when I first got AVG, at least a year ago. It may not have been prominent but they were up front about the existence of a free version and didn't make it intentionally difficult to navigate to it.

This experience makes me suspect that they intend to discontinue offering a free edition at all around 8.0 sometime in 2007, and no doubt they will "sunset" the free 7.5 with the same bothersome dialog box as they sunsetted 7.1.

Unless they make it silently morph into a paid version and start quietly charging a credit card number you didn't even give them, then justify this by saying "We changed this license agreement page on our Web site that nothing at all links to months ago to warn you of this change and give you time to uninstall to opt out!" or some such rot. Well, no, that would require them to descend to Intuit's level in less than a year from being better than McAfee, which would be astonishing even in Internet time. But still...

The really weird thing is that I have seen this sort of deliberately-shoddy Web site navigation idiom before.

On porn sites.

Free porn sites, aside from trying to exploit your browser to install spyware and blasting you with popups, always have a bunch of prominent and relevant-looking links at the top that lead to various pay sites and around in circles, and a single tiny link at the bottom of the third page down some obscure hierarchy that actually goes to some actual image galleries.

(As a rule, they also have the navigation deliberately broken if you disable Javashit so they can blast you with popups and try to hijack your browser into installing spyware. Images sometimes hide behind individual captchas -- not to stop automated ripping, though that's what they'll claim, oh no. A script running on the server detects a visitor's loaded a page with a captcha and requests a comment posting form from a blog site that uses captchas, then feeds the captcha right through. The visitor dutifully solves the captcha and submits it, and the script submits the solution along with linkspam to the blog in turn. If the blog posting succeeds, the visitor, unaware of any of this backend functionality, gets to see the nudie pics. And of course some "free" sites lure you deep in with tease pictures and a nesting tree of gallery links, the leaves of which ask for a credit card number for "age verification". Yeah, right. It's funny that although it's damned weak for "age verification" (like nobody's ever borrowed Daddy's credit card, especially when they only have to copy the number down onto some paper without actually taking the physical card at all to do so) it just happens to be perfect for charging someone money. No doubt enough of those they rip off are too embarrassed to question the bogus charges and involve the police, or even request a chargeback. And they probably don't just ding it once, but sell the number on the black market or something...)

So, tell me why a reputable company like AVG with a stellar product (and even free editions) is resorting to tactics copied from such reputable companies as freeanalasiansxxx.com?

(It's also worth noting that if you visit one of these porn sites and get infected with something, then buy a paid version of AVG to get disinfected, both profit. Hmm. Strange bedfellows?)

So, while AVG so far works far better and has a free personal-use version, I am unconvinced that this will last given the events of today. The use of navigational metaphors pioneered by the likes of freesexplosionarchive.com isn't exactly encouraging, and that's just for starters. Breaking from the background auto-updating model to push users to the Web site has to be part of a funding drive of sorts -- a certain percentage will quickly give up looking for a free upgrade and a certain fraction of those will, in turn, settle for a pay version because AVG's worked well in the past. Of course, people who can see more than one move ahead will realize that once they know they can do that to you they will commence tightening the screws, and that this is usually just the first step down the same road AOL and the like have taken, will move on elsewhere or persist until they find the free version they cleverly hid ...