So I was poking through gpedit.msc looking for things to disable when I found:
I thought desktop gadgets were removed in Windows 8? To test it I enabled them, got my favorite .gadget.
Nada.
Is this for compatibility purposes or just another example of Windows bloat?
P.S.
I know there are third party programs to get them working in Windows 10, I just think its odd
You are right, I have it too although I was never a fan of gadgets and found them mildly useless because they worked on desktop only which I scarcely see, maybe once or twice a day and they are burden to RAM and CPU.
Don't know the reason it's still there, maybe just a leftover or for compatibility's sake. By default, it's policy is not set so by default it's just some text floating around and not much of a bloat.
It would be interesting to see if some of those third party programs change policy setting.
I think if people upgraded from Windows 7 they are still in your system albeit redundant - I get the impression a clean install of Windows 10 though will have no trace of them but I'm not 100% certain
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