How are new users ever going to try out Growl now? There's no free trial (only an old version that doesn't work well under Lion).
I also don't appreciate the way this was pushed to existing users: I got a notification that there is an update for Growl, so I dutifully click on that and promptly get sent to an iTunes store page demanding money.
At this point I've disabled Growl to find out how much I really relied on it.
A few days later I'm happy to report that I don't miss Growl at all and have completely uninstalled it now. Turns out bouncing dock icons are sufficient to point out when an application wants attention.
I also don't appreciate the way this was pushed to existing users: I got a notification that there is an update for Growl, so I dutifully click on that and promptly get sent to an iTunes store page demanding money.
At this point I've disabled Growl to find out how much I really relied on it.