Microsoft Now Uses Windows 10's Start Menu To Display Ads (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson writes: We've all become used to the idea of ads online — it's something that has become part and parcel of using the internet — but in Windows? If you've updated to build 10565 of Windows 10, you're in for something of a surprise: the Start menu is now being used to display ads. We're not talking about ads for Viagra, porn, or anything like that, but ads for apps. Of course, Microsoft is not describing them as ads; 'Suggested apps' has a much more approachable and fluffy feel to it. Maybe. This is a 'feature' that's currently only being shown to Windows Insiders, but it could spread to everyone else. Will it be well-received?

Comments

Re:A new useful feature...

[governorx]

I have long felt that as the end user that is forced to consume the advertisement content we should be getting paid for the time and brainpower needed to do so. At the very least it eats the bandwidth we are paying for. Perhaps this train of thought could lead to some interesting legislation.

Anyway, can't wait for the OS to hang like a web page because its waiting for the servers to send advertisement data. Can't wait for adblock and noscript for windows 10 operating system.

-gov

Re:If you did not pay for the product, you are one

[dAzED1]

and just how is it that you secure a product that is constantly talking to systems on the internet, and doesn't have a way to disable such communication? An early beta of Win10 did this as well, I saw it - I was just curious what Win10 looked like, so I put it on something. After seeing that, I quickly removed it and any thought I'd ever use Windows for anything ever again.

Re:If you did not pay for the product, you are one

[Anonymous Coward]

One more reason to relegate Windows to a VM guest position, if you really need to have it, while running Linux as the hardware supervisor...

Re:If you did not pay for the product, you are one

[LVSlushdat]

I have a small side business (me and two other techs) doing Windows cleanup and upgrades of older systems still on XP over to XUbuntu. Since about 2011, we've done over 30 such systems, and in most cases, before the upgrade our phone number was on the customers speeddial, due to constant malware infestations.. We rarely hear from those folks anymore... Since Windows 10 has come out, we've had several customers who bought brandnew systems at a big-box store come to us and ask about what they'd heard about Windows 10 and its blabbing everything to MS... We showed them several traffic analysis done on an "uncastrated" copy of Win10. In both cases, the owners opted for us to install Linux on their systems. I told them that we *could* run some tools that would disable the especially blatant spying aspects, but there was ZERO assurance that MS would not come out with an update that would roll our "castration" back... Our recommendation was to stop using MS products if the customer had ANY concerns about privacy and Microsoft...

Re:If you did not pay for the product, you are one

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Sounds like a feature ISPs can provide for just an extra $9.99 a month:

[X] Disable ads in Windows
[X] Disable tracking in Windows

I think you forgot a piece of your prediction.

Re:If you did not pay for the product, you are one

[squiggleslash]

Every other post about Google is someone bashing it for "selling personal data to advertisers" (which, FWIW, never happens) so I'm not sure where you're getting it from that there's a double standard here.

As for these "ads", I can't comment. What I will say is that if there's no way to turn them off, then it's not a good thing. If I fork out $100-200 for an operating system, whether it comes with my computer or I buy it separately, I don't want ads with it. And no, for those about to say it, I don't consider a "free upgrade" a "free operating system". If you want to call it free, let me dual boot between my existing Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 installs and Windows 10. Replacements are not free. Ever.