Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com November 14, some Windows 11 users who were previously on the Dev channel found relevant promotional content in the start menu and recommended that users sign up for a Microsoft account and upload the relevant data to OneDrive. This practice of placing advertisements has been strongly criticized by many users, believing that these advertisements have seriously affected the experience of the system.

There is a precedent for doing this. To be fair, it is not surprising that users have such strong opposition. It's not the first time Microsoft has implanted ads in its system. The company has previously implanted test ads to promote Microsoft Editor in its file manager. At the time, the company quickly deleted them, saying they did not intend to release them to the public.

Microsoft may use the same excuse this time, but many tech media and users are worried that Microsoft will definitely promote such an operation in the future, but the exact launch date is not yet clear.

CTOnews.com learned that the foreign technology media NeoWin gave an in-depth introduction to this, which did not think that all Microsoft's official promotions should be classified as "advertisements." The media thinks some of them are good recommendations to boost productivity, depending on how you look at the content. For example, it is recommended that you back up your data to OneDrive. You can also use 5GB's free storage space for free, and you do not necessarily need to register for advanced capacity. Now, should tips / suggestions be displayed on the start menu? This is a completely different debate (but the media thinks the answer is "No").

And this advertising problem is not unique to Windows 11. For example, Microsoft promoted the Microsoft Edge browser in the start menu of the Windows 10 system.

Also in the comparison of the two images below, you can see the difference between searching for "Download Google Chrome" in a Microsoft Edge browser and searching for "Download Microsoft Edge" in Google Chrome. Please note that I did not use any ad blockers or other enabled extensions on either of the two browsers.

There is a big difference in the user experience between the two browsers. In fact, the media learned a few days ago that Microsoft was recruiting people to create new revenue channels to recoup their investment through advertising and promotion of Microsoft services.

What Microsoft wants to emphasize here is that there is a precedent for advertising in Windows 11, which Microsoft has been doing for many years, only occasionally opposed by users and media like us. Consumers just had some short-term anger, and then things calmed down until the next round of "promotions" attacked our software.

Microsoft's practice speculates that the media fully agrees with Microsoft's approach of reducing the user experience by 99% for 1% of its target users. You are providing free operating system upgrades to hundreds of millions of customers, and you must recoup your investment in some way. But if, as a consumer, you are almost always surrounded by advertisements for Microsoft services, is this really a free upgrade? From locking Windows 11 PC through the start menu to opening Microsoft Edge? For millions of customers who are not interested in upsell options, is the cash opportunity worth worsening the user experience?

In response to all these questions, I think Microsoft hopes that users will come up with the "yes" answer, which is why we have seen continuous efforts in this area over the past few years. You might argue that many promotions can be disabled through settings, but should customers be expected to do so just to get a normal experience?

The real problem now is that the consumer experience of many Microsoft services is deteriorating, so much so that I'm starting to dislike and avoid many of them. Ads are not even context-sensitive, and even if the media editor has subscribed for many years, they still receive ads from Microsoft 365. It's like Microsoft shooting arrows in the dark instead of using all the Microsoft account or telemetry data about us to show ads that might be really useful.

Instead, Microsoft's strategy seems to be that if you show Microsoft ads to hundreds of millions of customers, at least 1 million people may subscribe. But what if the user experience is ruined for the other 99% or target audience? Microsoft doesn't care because it gets a steady source of revenue from millions of other subscribers.

This is indeed the theme of my whole article. I fully understand why Microsoft is moving in this direction, but I also think it's a very bad experience for most end users. At this point, I wonder if Microsoft should consider breaking up another Windows SKU. One is a free version with these ads, and the other is an one-time permanent license that provides an ad-free Windows experience. Will people pay for it? Only time will tell, but it would be great to consider those who really hate advertising.

Some suggestions that although the media recognizes this revenue approach from Microsoft's point of view, the media believes that Microsoft's ads should be placed in the relevant application scenarios, rather than directly in the main UX interaction elements. For example, OneDrive promotion / promotion content should be displayed in the storage settings, not in the start menu.

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