When people complain about ads in Windows I wonder if they are seeing a different version than I am. Maybe it is the difference between US and EU or Home and Pro versions?
They do place links to third party games in the start menu upon installation. And they also inform about first party services where it makes sense (like OneDrive in Explorer, and Office365 when trying to edit a Word file). I wouldn't consider the first party offers an ad, if anything maybe an upsell, but that is just semantics.
The thing is, I haven't payed for Windows in close to a decade (legally!). Even at work, we get all the Windows and Office licenses from Microsoft Gold (for having a couple employees take some IoT certification and slapping their sticker on promotional material). One way microsoft makes money is with these "Ads".
If there is something that bothers me about Windows, it is the inconsistency. Visually, and quality wise. It seems MS is a totally heterogenous organisation with some brilliant teams that have a lot of freedom, and some less good teams that are heavily constrained. Some parts are really good (like the work on Windows Terminal, WSL, the new iteration of fluent design). But it seems nobody has the authority to push consistency across the system. There are longstanding bugs and sources of wierdness that are never addressed. Meanwhile new features are added at a breakneck pace (like the blurry weather applet). I can imagine some manager shouting "ship it now!" when I look at it.
And some decisions seem to be business motivated, like trying to push Edge and trying to create restricted a "Chromebook"-like edition again and again, but they neither make sense business- nor technology-wise. It sometimes seems like nobody has the big picture over there.
Ah you're right I do recall Windows Update installing a game by itself. That was freaking annoying because it happened when I was creating a master image in "audit mode". And you couldn't "generalize" it anymore in order to clone it, because a UWP app was installed.
They do place links to third party games in the start menu upon installation. And they also inform about first party services where it makes sense (like OneDrive in Explorer, and Office365 when trying to edit a Word file). I wouldn't consider the first party offers an ad, if anything maybe an upsell, but that is just semantics.
The thing is, I haven't payed for Windows in close to a decade (legally!). Even at work, we get all the Windows and Office licenses from Microsoft Gold (for having a couple employees take some IoT certification and slapping their sticker on promotional material). One way microsoft makes money is with these "Ads".
If there is something that bothers me about Windows, it is the inconsistency. Visually, and quality wise. It seems MS is a totally heterogenous organisation with some brilliant teams that have a lot of freedom, and some less good teams that are heavily constrained. Some parts are really good (like the work on Windows Terminal, WSL, the new iteration of fluent design). But it seems nobody has the authority to push consistency across the system. There are longstanding bugs and sources of wierdness that are never addressed. Meanwhile new features are added at a breakneck pace (like the blurry weather applet). I can imagine some manager shouting "ship it now!" when I look at it.
And some decisions seem to be business motivated, like trying to push Edge and trying to create restricted a "Chromebook"-like edition again and again, but they neither make sense business- nor technology-wise. It sometimes seems like nobody has the big picture over there.