Is Yahoo Messenger software is acting like a badware?

I am a great fan of Yahoo! messenger and I use it to keep in touch with my friends and family. I was delighted when Yahoo! introduced an auto update feature to update the messenger software which would help me keep my messenger updated with the latest release and all the great features that Yahoo introduces. But the auto update feature has a long way to go to be a good one and not annoying.

My settings:

• I don't use any of the browser toolbars provided by so many software vendors. I just don't like it and don't see the value in using it.
• I use Google as my search engine as I like the results provided by Google as compared to other search providers.
• I use either blank or my company's intranet page as my home page for browser on Internet explorer and the personalised Google home page for my Firefox browser as it gives me option to add various content of my choice.

Yahoo! Settings:

Yahoo! first asked me my permission whether I wanted to enable auto update or not. So far so good. But it nowhere mentioned what it will do once the auto-update feature is enabled. Yahoo! installer did not record my existing settings and install just that part of the software that I had installed. I guess it would not be too hard to read that without storing them anywhere (to allay concerns of privacy) and install just that part which a particular user had originally selected.

On completing the installation, Yahoo!

• Installed the Yahoo! Browser toolbar
• Reset my home page to Yahoo! home page
• Reset my default search provider (the one that comes in the Browser search bar)

I again had to go and uninstall those components manually. Looking at what it installed, I figure that Yahoo! auto update feature installs software with its default settings. And comparing this behaviour of the software with the definition of Badware from the independent watchdog organisation stopbadware.org, it does behave like a badware.

Suggestions for Yahoo:

Yahoo! should take feedback such as this and try to make their software less intrusive. Software should help people do their jobs (or hobbies) and not make people change their habits and it definitely should not be putting things on the user's computer without permission.