Microsoft testing ads in Windows 11
Microsoft has started testing advertisements for its products within the Windows 11 file explorer, BleepingComputer reports.
The publication spotted a post from a Windows user and Insider MVP who had uncovered one such ad in a recent test build of Windows 11 promoting spelling and grammar checking tool Microsoft Editor.
“Some people will go mad if Microsoft starts adding ads in explorer,” he tweeted alongside a screenshot showing the ad above the listing of files and folders.
Many users on Twitter responded with scathing criticism of the move.
One contributor said the file explorer was “one of the worst places to show ads”, while another said they were “very disappointed” with this decision.
A third threatened to “immediately uninstall Windows 11” if Microsoft went through with the change.
Several also said they hoped there would be an option to turn the ads off and that this should be the default setting.
But one user said that people should not be surprised given that Microsoft had offered Windows 11 as a free upgrade.
“What did you expect from something that’s ‘free’ from a for-profit business?” he stated.
Below is a screenshot of the ad as shared by Twitter user @Florian.
BleepingComputer could not replicate the ad when running the newest Windows Insider build, suggesting that Microsoft might have been running an A/B experiment that would see it disable the ad if the response were negative.
This is not the software giant’s first attempt at pushing commercials to users in its widely-used desktop operating system.
In 2016, it showed an ad for its cloud storage service OneDrive within the Windows 10 file explorer.
Later, it tested ads for its free Office web apps in the Wordpad menubar and prompted users to download Microsoft Edge in the Start Menu each time they searched for rival browsers.
In one infamous test, the company managed to break the Start Menu with a Microsoft Teams ad.
Now read: Windows 11 will get new features in small regular updates
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