CCleaner appears by surprise on Microsoft Store
As a general rule, those of Redmond are suspicious of applications whose specialty is to touch the operating system’s guts.
And this attitude is understandable because an incorrect modification in the configuration registry, the deletion of a critical system file, and other similar operations, which can be carried out by mistake by this type of software, can have disastrous effects. Same.
But the case of CCleaner goes further. In 2015, a Microsoft chief engineer made his opinion on CCleaner clear for the reason he raised before. Still, everything got worse when, in 2018, it first became known that a version of the program had a back door, and only a month later, CCleaner returned to this in the pillory by the inclusion of advertising. But the auction came, without a doubt, in 2019, when Microsoft took a step further by adding it to its blacklist.
As we already told you, this means that CCleaner should not appear on the company’s pages. It cannot be recommended in them. Comments or user interventions that include links to the software or its website are eliminated. Either by the automatic moderation systems or by the moderators of said communities. In other words, we are talking about a full-blown bolt.
However, and surprisingly, it seems that it has gone from the black list to the gray list, or maybe even to the safelist, since for a few days, it is possible to install CCleaner from the Microsoft Store, the Windows application store. This seems to confirm the opening trend of Microsoft with its store, something that already led, a few months ago, to Mozilla Firefox also making the leap to the Windows store for the first time in its history.
It is clear that Redmond has set the goal of making the Windows App Store more attractive to users, and obviously, a critical factor in doing so is that it has the applications most sought after by users. To this end, the company has relaxed the necessary rules for the inclusion of software in the store to receive more surprising news in the coming months.
Now that Microsoft has opened its hand to allow in its store the inclusion of software that until now was practically banned on its website, and that also allows its installation even in systems with relatively high-security settings, Like Windows 10 and 11S, it’s surprising.
Have there been any changes to CCleaner that would enable Microsoft to now consider it safe? Or perhaps it is that you have decided to renounce the tutelage of what the users of your operating system do? Or maybe a middle ground between the two?