One of the coffee shop group has an android phone. He complained that every time he is in range of various wifi hotspots, he gets an alert from the Bing app announcing it's ready to go. He can't shut off the alert without first signing up for that app's paid service. He can't uninstall the "free" app either.

He didn't say, I didn't ask what phone model, but I pretty sure it a Verizon phone.

I recently saw on a friend's phone some really annoying and useless social networking app, that wanted $10 to uninstall...

That was mentioned about the Bing app as well.

Yes, this was an unfortunate decision that Verizon made for several of their Android phones. I don't believe they're doing it anymore, though. It was a big story last year but I haven't heard much about it since then.

And yes, the most annoying part about it was that it was changed but you couldn't change it back. That really pissed me off. It's also another reason why I'm waiting for the Nexus/Droid Prime or whatever it's called. I cannot use an Android phone that isn't plain Android. Again, I have hopes that things will trend towards stock, but the carriers and manufacturers are morons.