Is Microsoft Office Adware?

An anonymous reader writes "Office may fall under Microsoft's own definition of adware. It links to third-party commercial add-ons, includes up-selling promos, requires cookies for certain functions, and collects technical information. While this is like a normal day on the web, should the commercial office suite be held to a different standard and possibly be considered adware? The article also notes that clicking advertising links in Office will bring up Internet Explorer, regardless of whether or not it is the default browser. We discussed Microsoft's decision to turn Works into adware a few months ago.

Comments

Re:Error in title?

[blackest_k]

To quote the great Samual Jackson "English Motherfucker do you speak it?"
if you can not comprehend the summary, you have no use for this type of software.
Maybe this will be of use http://www.marks-english-school.com/games.html

Astroturf or troll?

[LandruBek]

But honestly, I can't make myself care about the hypocrisy anymore

At first I thought you meant Microsoft's hypocrisy: that they sell you their expensive software and then once it's installed, act like you need to pay them again. Or that with one hand they (anti-competitively) bundle Winodws Defender to keep crap off your computer and with the other hand they put crap back on your computer. Or that their software might be (on YOUR computer) the kernel you run and trust and hope is fair and disinterested; and then it turns out the same company's software has a great interest in an agenda that involves you spending money. There's lots of hypocrisy going on here.

So I nodded and skimmed on --

The I realized you maybe meant Slashdot's "hypocrisy" for "talking shit about Microsoft Office," as if this is an Open Office advocacy site, which would be a very boring site. Good heavens, don't you even know what "talking shit" means? It means substanceless accusations. Feeding ads to a captive, paying audience is a substantial accusation. If you have some dirt on OO.o then out with it, we are interested. (And we'll fix it -- because we can, we have the source.) And hypocrisy means holding a double standard, or acting -- but criticizing expensive bloatware when free alternatives exist is a perfectly coherent, unified standard.

The Microsoft Shill factor on Slashdot is annoying. We should call it "astrocrabgrass" or something; I speculate you are part of it, AC. Then again maybe you're just a troll and I bit, in which case congratulations.