Perhaps showing their true colors Microsoft makes it pretty clear that they are no better and perhaps worse than the proverbial fox guarding the hen house:

Microsoft should be ashamed of itself for trying to turn its own security flaw to its commercial gain. There’s no reason to believe that customers installing a mandatory security fix also want to change their browser home page to an MSN portal, and there’s even less excuse for trying to spring a change on the unwary.
Interestingly, the test version of Microsoft’s new AntiSpyware program does something similar.

Of course, if you are not using IE as your browser you did not notice this happening to you. Hint, hint.
And, why shouldn’t Microsoft owe, say, $5 compensation to everyone who had to spend time reconfiguring their systems as a result of this theft.