We called it. Microsoft denied it. Now the reality of advertising in Windows has arrived. We’re not talking about the tiny, easily-ignored ads commonly seen in Skype, either. The ads that just started appearing in Windows 10 are hard to miss, and they’re in Windows Explorer, arguably the core user interface of the system.

Of course Microsoft is calling these ads ‘tips’ and insists that they just provide helpful information to Windows 10 users. Okay, let’s take a look at what users are seeing:

You may disagree, but in my opinion, that’s an ad. It might as well say “Your Advertisement Here” or “Advertise In This Space”. At this stage, I’m sure we’ll only see ads from Microsoft in Explorer, but once the anger subsides, it’s difficult to imagine Microsoft won’t start selling that space – and others like it – to the highest bidder.

That’s right, Windows 10 really is an advertising platform, just as we’ve been saying all along. It explains why Microsoft was so happy to give away the O/S to anyone who upgraded from an earlier version, why they pushed so hard and literally tricked people to upgrade from earlier versions, why they included so much user activity tracking in Windows 10, and why they retrofitted that tracking into earlier versions when people failed to upgrade in sufficient numbers.

Clearly, the underlying reason for Microsoft’s advertising-in-Windows strategy is simply the enormous amount of money being made by Google from advertising.

Linux is looking a lot better now, isn’t it?

Analysis from The Verge and Ars Technica.

Update 2017Mar17: Tom Warren over at The Verge reacts to the new ads in Windows 10. He describes it as an ‘infestation’, and I agree with his assessment.