They are the true winners because end of the day, they’ve invested in R&D, they’ve established what’s hot on the market, they’ve developed it and paid to market it. They then extract sweet profits out of it and couldn’t care less who will be proclaimed a winner and where.
Now, getting on to what’s hot on the market, users like convenience and automation and for that, they are ready to pay. This has been proven times and times again, this has been the business model historically of many companies and products and generates billions.
The “let me ask the user” approach is not preferred. Majority of users don’t care whether or not wuaclt.exe will inject a module into svchost.exe.
This approach works only for a very small audience and it is up to a vendor to decide whether they want to cater for a football game in a Dutch village or for the UEFA final game (Hopefully at Wembley Stadium one day).
Vendors have developed automated and layered solutions that provide sufficient security to real people, encountering real-life situations. This method has not been proven to not work.
I invite everyone who believes that asking the user is better than automation, to go and do their laundry at the river as well, with the laundry soap. This is more “effective” than using a washer. But does more effective always equal better? I’ll let you answer that for yourself.