
Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10 - cgtyoder
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/192251/microsoft-is-adding-ads-to-the-mail-app-in-windows-10
======
jammygit
All I want is to be able to give companies my money in exchange for not being
spied on, manipulated, or locked into some walled garden. I can't for my OS -
I have to use free gnu/Linux because everyone else treats me like crap.

Is my money not good enough for them? This is getting absurd

~~~
eutropia
I had to spend several days manually ripping out huge chunks of Win10 to get
something resembling the usability of XP. That included removing all of the
updating utilities, hosts-file blocking of microsoft servers, removal of most
of the preinstalled apps, as well as disabling and deleting all of the
scheduled tasks which try to re-install and re-enable those settings.

All this trouble so I can play modern PC games... Next system upgrade cycle I
think I'll be moving to linux.

~~~
closetohome
1998: I'd never connect a Windows box directly to the Internet. Hackers might
break my computer.

2018: I'd never connect a Windows box directly to the Internet. Microsoft
might break my computer.

~~~
Spivak
Oh man I get just a glimpse of what the Windows team has to deal with when
applying patches it's absolutely insane. Never in my life have I had to worry
that yum update was going to trash my system.

~~~
chii
But when it does, it rm -rf /

------
coltonv
Amazon has lately been putting ads on prime video for other prime video shows.
I have a feeling we're rapidly going towards most paid services having ads.

Also, on prime video, occasionally, pressing the fast forward button won't
skip the ad. I'm sure it's one of those "bugs" that just _happens_ to force
the user to do something the company wants but the user doesn't but I have a
feeling it might just stop working all the time and we'll be forced to sit
through the whole ad on a paid service.

~~~
ryanianian
This is infuriating. I'm paying for the service--that's supposedly what's
sustaining it--why are there ads? If you (Amazon) decide you want more money,
let me decide to pay more to eliminate ads.

Similar things abound with Hulu. Even the more expensive "ad free" version has
some ads for certain shows/movies due to "licensing agreements" (read: Hulu
wanting more money).

~~~
untog
This is hardly new. Cable TV, magazines and newspapers have always cost money
and had ads included.

~~~
thiagocsf
I beg to disagree. I remember a golden age when cable tv was known to be
better because it didn’t have any ads.

Slowly they became as ad infested as open channels.

~~~
zokula
What are you talking about? cable TV has always had ads in the very beginning
in the 1950s and 60s on through the 1970s when the first cable TV stations
came out.

~~~
autoexec
Nope. local channels continued to have ads but cable did not. Cable TV was
advertised as being ad free because you were paying for it. It was part of the
sales pitch.

My household was a subscriber in those early days and I remember the concern
that ads were coming. I remember that they started by putting the ads between
shows and only advertising upcoming shows on that channel. Then it moved to
general ads about shows on that channel, then to ads about shows on _other_
channels. At that point I knew the cause was lost and sure enough soon it was
normal TV ads interrupting shows.

Here is a newspaper article from around that time asking how much longer cable
TV will be ad free

[https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-
inv...](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-
commercials.html)

------
jimmies
Anyone remembers just 5 years ago, Microsoft had a huge campaign about how
everyone got "scroogled" by Google? Especially this ad about Google reading
your mail to devliver you ads?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI1ominSL_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI1ominSL_c)

Oh, how the time has changed!

~~~
EduardoBautista
There is still no evidence that they are reading your emails so it's not the
same. I am fine with ads, just as long as they don't mine my data and follow
me around.

~~~
Havoc
>I am fine with ads, just as long as they don't mine my data and follow me
around.

Pretty much every ad platform out there does exactly that

~~~
EduardoBautista
Duckduckgo does not. Hacker News does not. There are many examples. Ads on
blogs such as Daring Fireball and Coding Horror do not. I gladly whitelist
these sites.

~~~
DoctorOW
Do Hacker News and Daring Fireball have ad platforms?

~~~
Silfen
HN has in-feed ads for Y Combinator businesses. A great example of benevolent,
win-win advertising, in my opinion.

------
rayvy
Slight tangent, but @jammygit mentioned in this thread:

> "All I want is to be able to give companies my money in exchange for not
> being spied on, manipulated, or locked into some walled garden....Is my
> money not good enough for them?

Can someone elaborate a bit on this idea? Are we at a point where there is
something more valuable than money itself? Data? Is this the point where
Google et al can say "Nah, we actually don't want your flat out subscription
fee cause that's pennies on the dollar compared to what we can get with our
data collection efforts"

I've made snarky remarks to this kind of thinking in the past but I didn't
take it too seriously. Does anyone else see this becoming a real problem?

If company XYZ offers service/product A, should I be able to buy that
product/service _flat out_ , (if I'm financially able) without bells and
whistles _even if_ company XYZ insists on adding bells and whistles? (i.e.,
data collection). Is that somehow a sort of right as a consumer?

~~~
inetknght
Anecdote: I used to pay for Imgur.com pro account. They then _removed_ their
subscription model and now have an advertisement-based model. Their
advertisements are notoriously... not well intentioned to the end-user. And I
would be _very_ surprised if Imgur is not selling user data. I'm actually very
upset about that.

Another anecdote: Spotify. I don't use that.
[https://twitter.com/mikarv/status/1012386696934182912](https://twitter.com/mikarv/status/1012386696934182912)

Another anecdote: DI.fm. I _do_ use that. I pay for a pro subscription.
Unfortunately their privacy policy makes it clear that they do sell tracking
metrics to advertisers (double-dipping).

Then there's, of course, Microsoft. Clearly they track users. How can you
guarantee that they don't sell your data to third parties neither now nor in
the future?

> _If company XYZ offers service /product A, should I be able to buy that
> product/service flat out, (if I'm financially able) without bells and
> whistles even if company XYZ insists on adding bells and whistles? (i.e.,
> data collection). Is that somehow a sort of right as a consumer? _

I absolutely 100% believe that this should be an ability for end-users to do.
Buy the product and provide the ability to 100% disable telemetry.

~~~
therealdrag0
I don't think we should conflate telemetry with general user data that can be
sold. Seeing HOW a user uses an app (re your Spotify example) is useful for
the developers of the app. That is not data they are selling to other
companies and IMO isn't a privacy issue and shouldn't negatively affect user
experience.

What theme you use or what buttons you click most often, isn't sellable; what
is sellable are interests, consumables, and demographic distinguishers.

~~~
inetknght
Seeing HOW I use an app can be a perceived privacy issue. It _definitely_ can
negatively affect user experience. Case in point: limited bandwidth and/or
high latency, especially if the telemetry is transmitted with synchronous
communication.

What theme I use _is_ sellable, especially if themes can be purchased. What
buttons I click most often is also sellable by making it known what features
would attract the most advertisements or what kind of data drives my use of
the application.

~~~
therealdrag0
1\. Personally I think telemetry is worth its weight in byes. If you don't
have enough bandwidth to load media, that can reduce UX on most sites, but
that's your problem and doesn't affect most target audiences. If you're
streaming audio on Spotify the telemetry bandwidth is unlikely to get in the
way.

2\. I think there's still a distinction. Using telemetry to better monetize
the product your using is different than selling data to a third party to
target you.

Back to your original post though, I do agree that you should be able to opt
out of any and all data collection. This already is a pattern too, you often
see the "allow us to collect diagnostic information" dialog in software.

------
andrewmunsell
Is it at all ironic that I get a page that is trying to force me to turn off
my ad blocker when I am trying to view a link about Microsoft putting ads in
their Mail app?

~~~
Semaphor
Weird, either you need to get a better adblocker, or they don't show that in
EU.

~~~
andrewmunsell
That's probably true, I haven't touched the AdBlocker extension in a while and
I get anti-ad block modals all the time. Probably time to look into an updated
list with a working anti-ad block blocker

------
TheRealDunkirk
Just another step towards the inevitable announcement of a "free," "promotion-
supported" version of Windows. For decades, the beige-box industry was
supported by doing things like including trialware antivirus, browser search
bars, and shareware games on top of the OS. Why shouldn't Microsoft put the
crapware on the machine directly, and eliminate the middle man?

I would hope that this would allow them to split the codebase, and make other,
paid versions (professional, enterprise) that didn't have ANY of the tracking
or advertising -- and didn't require extensive GPO manipulation to turn off --
but that's probably too much to ask.

~~~
hakfoo
What's funny is that there was definitely a point where Microsoft themselves
realized this business model by OEMs was undermining their platform.

They actually promoted "signature" PCs which were supposed to come without
crapware. I can recall buying a Windows 8 tablet from a brick-and-mortar
Microsoft store because I knew it would come with a hassle-free clean install.

------
puranjay
And I thought Windows 10 couldn't get any worse.

After the latest update, my hard drive wheezes like an asthmatic climbing his
25th flight of stairs on startup.

Just a long list of problems with Windows 10

~~~
aaaaaaaaaab
>hard drive

Found your problem!

~~~
crankylinuxuser
better than a micro soft!

/har har har

But seriously, I still refer to even SSDs as hard drives. Spinning rust or
memory chips. They're interchangable right now, until spinning rust phases out
completely.

------
matchbok
So crazy how far behind Windows is to OS X. Even basic GUI stuff (animations,
smoothness, etc) are not even a comparison. This is just another example.
Ridiculous.

~~~
kkarakk
os x can't show me what's happening(speed/time to complete transfers) when i'm
copying multiple files, it's a shit os for most real world tasks for me

------
AngeloAnolin
They also do this on the web version of Outlook. [1].

And you could see that the ads are littered all over the place. And their ads
don't really make sense anyway, as for example, the ads that I see are
something that:

\- I am not interested \- Irrelevant as the products have no use for me \-
Unable to purchase as the products themselves are not available locally where
I am located.

They should probably train their algorithms for ads to ensure that it is
something interesting (or at least would compel the consumer to look). For
example, I noticed that in Instagram, the ads are more targeted, and they
usually remind you of stuff that you have recently searched.

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/fcmyMMf](https://imgur.com/a/fcmyMMf)

~~~
hadrien01
Outlook.com is also a mail provider, so it's not really a proper comparison.
Outlook Web App (OWA), the Web client for Exchange and Office 365, and Outlook
on the desktop have no ads.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Dear Microsoft,

As a vocal critic of the Linux Desktop, your horrifically misguided attempts
to "improve" Windows since Windows 10 have so degraded the experience of using
it that I am now only 2 reasons[0] away from switching anyway, so at least I
don't have to pay for the privilege of using crappy software.

I would ask you kindly to cease your endeavors to kill off the Windows Desktop
and personal computing in general, but having dealt with you I know that it is
your policy to ignore user feedback.

[0] 1. I hate package managers as an application installation paradigm, and 2.
GPU drivers still perform worse for my card, if you must know.

~~~
jcelerier
> 1\. I hate package managers as an application installation paradigm

wat

so you prefer go to vlc.com for vlc, 7-zip.com for 7-zip, update them by hand
or add custom system services constantly running for every program to install
themselves, etc etc instead of a `pacman -S 7z vlc krita libreoffice [every
other software you need]`

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Yes. I like having software that is up to date and delivered direct from the
developer. I like having portable applications that don't even need
installation. I like being able to put applications on different disks. I like
being able to have multiple versions of an application.

There is not a single package manager in existence for Linux that gives me
these things.

~~~
rkeene2
AppFS is a package manager for Linux that exists and solves all these
problems, except the "putting them on different disks", which it doesn't
prevent you from doing but it doesn't really make any sense either.

[http://appfs.rkeene.org/](http://appfs.rkeene.org/)

~~~
russdpale
If its one thing I have learned about software development, its that you must
account for people doing completely non sensical things.

I knew a guy who had MS word 97, 2000, 03, and 07 all installed on the same
machine, and he used all of them for various tasks. Insane? Most certainly,
but welcome to humanity.

~~~
rkeene2
AppFS has no problem with that. The problem comes from keeping different
packages on different disks -- since it caches them all into the same
directory by default. It would be trivial to make it cache files from certain
packages into different places as part of the configuration -- that's easy
enough. The issues come into place for files that are shared (having the same
SHA1) between packages, then you either have to duplicate the file or have
some policy of searching for it.

A better approach, if you care about this, is simply to have a lifecycle
policy where more recently used blocks live on the SSD and less recently used
blocks move to slower storage (bcache can do this for you), or are deleted
(this is a planned feature:
[http://appfs.rkeene.org/web/tktview?name=930821d0fb](http://appfs.rkeene.org/web/tktview?name=930821d0fb)
).

------
shanselman
Not happening.
[https://twitter.com/fxshaw/status/1063518498104664064](https://twitter.com/fxshaw/status/1063518498104664064)

~~~
SilasX
>This was an experimental feature that was never intended to be tested broadly
and it is being turned off.

"The trial balloon revealed too much backlash, we're going to pretend we never
had to plan to roll it out universally."

------
aw3c2
So, my uncle needs a new computer and he needs Windows 10 on it. How can I
make sure that he is not being spied on and psychologically manipulated by ads
right from the beginning? Is there a professional version of Windows 10 with
none of those shenanigans I keep hearing about?

~~~
Someone1234
After installing Windows 10:

Go to Settings -> Privacy, and slide many (most?) things to off. Including
Diagnostic & Usage Data to Basic.

Settings > Personalization > Start and slide "Occasionally show suggestions in
start" to off.

Settings -> Personalization -> Lock Screen and slide "Get fun facts, tips, and
more from Windows and Cortana on your lock screen" to off.

Settings -> System -> Notifications & actions -> "Get tip, tricks, and
suggestions as you use Windows" and "Show me the Windows welcome experience
after updates and occasionally when I sign in to highlight what's new and
suggested" to off.

Go to Cortana (Taskbar) -> Settings (Gear Icon) -> "Taskbar tidbits" to off

I wouldn't use the built in "Mail" app with or without ads, it is terrible.
Just have him simply not use it.

~~~
otippat
And then do it again after most updates to the system.

~~~
Someone1234
Fortunately they stopped doing that. It was definitely a problem with the
first two-ish feature updates for Windows 10 however.

------
genidoi
After Equifax why would they not? Seems like when it comes to actual tech
scandals, nobody cares. Frightening stuff.

------
Meai
This wouldn't be bad if I could uninstall that app but the button is gray on
my machine. Same for the Xbox apps that I am guaranteed to never need. Weird
feeling.

~~~
bdz
[https://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-
windows-10...](https://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-
windows-10s-built-in-apps-and-how-to-reinstall-them/)

Open the PowerShell as admin and copy:

Get-AppxPackage * windowscommunicationsapps * | Remove-AppxPackage (remove
space at the two asterisks, HN turns the text into italicized)

voilà, Mail and Calendar uninstalled. You can do this with all of the
preinstalled stuff (Xbox as well), see the link above.

~~~
swiley
>Open the PowerShell as admin and copy:

Having to do this has in the past been the main argument I've seen used
against using Linux based OSes. If you have to do it anyway you might as well
actually own your computer.

------
alkonaut
Seriously you can charge for a piece of software or you can put ads in it. I'm
fine with either. But don't do both.

Exactly how many dollars more would I have to pay for the Win10 license to not
see ads? I'd like that thanks.

------
ocdtrekkie
Microsoft continues to demonstrate that it's worst enemy is itself. There's no
way that throwing ads in the default Mail app is going to make them more money
than it costs them in the long run.

~~~
melling
Microsoft has had 90% marketshare for 20 years now.

You know who has demonstrated that they are their own worst enemy? Consumers.

People vote with their pocketbook. Now you have to live with that result.

~~~
intopieces
>People vote with their pocketbook

In this case, I don’t think that’s fair. A great number of people can’t devote
the time to learning a new operating system or cannot afford a high priced OS
X machine.

~~~
shock
> A great number of people can’t devote the time to learning a new operating
> system

Can't or won't? My experience has been that several people I know would rather
stay in their comfort zone rather than learn something new. I'm not just
talking about OSes here. I qualify this as a won't.

I suspect this reluctance to switch from the status quo might apply to a wider
population than my acquaintances.

~~~
intopieces
Can't or won't is a distinction without a difference. Desktop/laptop computer
ownership is flat and has been for the past decade [0] with smart phones and
tablets growing [1].

What's the use in learning an entirely new operating system on your desktop
whenever most of your time (65%) is being spent on Mobile anyway? [2]

[0] [http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/29/the-demographics-of-
de...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/29/the-demographics-of-device-
ownership/) [1] [http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/29/technology-device-
owne...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/29/technology-device-
ownership-2015/) [2] "Mobile now accounts for about 65% of total digital media
consumption" [https://hackernoon.com/how-much-time-do-people-spend-on-
thei...](https://hackernoon.com/how-much-time-do-people-spend-on-their-mobile-
phones-in-2017-e5f90a0b10a6)

------
reading-at-work
What does HN recommend as a better Win10 email client? I'm familiar with
Thunderbird and I'll probably switch to it if nothing else, but I'm not a huge
fan of the UI/UX.

~~~
Someone1234
This might sound glib, but as someone who has used both Thunderbird and
Outlook extensively, I don't recommend any desktop email client. Email clients
were designed for a whole different era, and only work well in that context.

Gmail, Outlook.com/O365/etc, are designed for you to "keep everything."
Problem is that all desktop email clients aren't designed that way, they want
you to have a very small limited subset of email that they can index and
constantly have in memory.

When these two worlds converge desktop clients choke and choke hard. Outlook
is so terrible that it almost needs to be completely retired. They've barely
updated it in ten years.

Best case scenario right now is full webmail (with anyone) and browser
notifications for new email etc if you need that.

~~~
jcelerier
> Problem is that all desktop email clients aren't designed that way, they
> want you to have a very small limited subset of email that they can index
> and constantly have in memory.

with large amounts of mail (~90k in one of my inboxes - and if someone asks
just yesterday I had to go and fetch some info from a 2007 mail), GMail chokes
much more than thunderbird, e.g. it takes 2/3 minutes and sometimes does not
work to mark a large set of email as read/archived/whatever while this is
almost instant with TB.

------
extesy
I suppose this is a consequence of making all future versions of Windows
essentially free by adopting "Windows as a Service" release process. When
everyone upgrades to Windows 10 there won't be anyone left to buy it anymore
so they need a new source of income to replace that.

~~~
aikah
> I suppose this is a consequence of making all future versions of Windows
> essentially free by adopting "Windows as a Service" release process. When
> everyone upgrades to Windows 10 there won't be anyone left to buy it anymore
> so they need a new source of income to replace that.

OEM Licenses are bound to a single computer AFAIK. You change computers you
need to pay for Windows again. So it's not like people will never buy Windows
anymore as long as they buy computers installed with Windows on it.

Before one would get a separate Windows CD with his computer and be able to
install it on many different machines, one activation at a time.

~~~
einr
But it also used to be that new Windows versions came out around every three
years so by the time you needed a new computer, you'd be paying the Windows
tax again anyway. In practice, not a lot of difference.

------
neurobashing
when someone says "let's monetize X", what they're really asking is, "how can
we burn all that developer goodwill we've worked really hard to earn". So
maybe go looking for another revenue channel?

------
airstrike
I miss Windows 8.1. There, I said it.

~~~
hiccuphippo
What was good about it compared to Windows 7?

~~~
keypress
Not the biggest fan of 8 series, but the best thing about it was some of the
energy optimisations - as they were going to target mobile. The kernel
hibernation is good, for quicker start up. But sadly that's at the expense of
hibernating proper.

8.1 brought back things like the closing button on metro apps, and some other
fudging, to make it a bit more Win 7, and it just felt like even more of an
abomination. The control panel/metro settings mixed UI - is the thing that
killed Windows for me. In Windows 10, I can't find anything setting wise
particularly easily. And on a recent new laptop start up, I cringed at all the
options that I had to turn off, and at the apps I tried to remove.

------
amyjess
I currently use this on my Surface because it's more touch-friendly than
Gmail's website, but it looks like I'll be moving on.

Any recommendations for a touch-friendly (i.e. _must_ be UWP) mail app for
Windows?

~~~
WorldMaker
The latest Gmail revamp is more touch-friendly than it used to be, especially
in Edge (despite Gmail's increasingly obnoxious insistence that you should
only use Chrome).

The article suggests that the Mail app will never have ads for Office 365
users. Office 365 Home is often a good deal for a Surface owner anyway, as it
boosts your OneDrive space, and gives you up to date copies of all the Office
programs, and stuff like that.

~~~
robocat
> despite Gmail's increasingly obnoxious insistence that you should only use
> Chrome

Fuck Edge touch support - they don't support the event API used by
Safari/Chrome, instead you need to use an MS specific touch API.

I support touch on IE11/Edge (because our business made a bet on Windows
Phone) but I have wasted an obscene amount of time to do so (we have very few
windows phone/laptop touch users).

I hate supporting Edge more than IE11 - weird bugs and continual problems with
the debugger and touch support.

~~~
WorldMaker
Are you talking about Pointer Events versus Touch Events?

Edge supports both (and has for some time). IE supports only Pointer Events.
(There is a polyfill for Touch Events on IE:
[https://github.com/WebReflection/ie-
touch](https://github.com/WebReflection/ie-touch))

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Touch_event...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Touch_events#Browser_compatibility)

[https://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer](https://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer)

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_eve...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_events)

 _Both_ are W3C recommended standards. Pointer Events has more capabilities,
and an easier abstraction for multi-modal input (ie, mouse and touch, or touch
and pen). So I often see Pointer Events recommended over Touch Events if you
can use Pointer Events. (React recently moved to recommending Pointer Events,
as one example.)

The big reason not to use Pointer Events is that Safari/WebKit has lagged far
behind on Pointer Event adoption (it is finally in experimental preview in
Safari, years after Firefox and Chrome/Blink, and seems to be part of the
increasing Blink/WebKit split). There is a Pointer Event Polyfill for Safari
(and other older browsers that support Touch Events but not Pointer Events):
[https://github.com/jquery/PEP](https://github.com/jquery/PEP)

------
jbigelow76
I wish we could see a breakout of what Microsoft estimates the advertising
revenue of littering their OS with ads (I'm leaving internal quality related
telemetry separate) is versus the brand value loss for those that don't want
to use something like ChromeOS for privacy reasons.

I don't care if you can turn it off, if ad revenue is now meaningful enough to
MS that it will be interleaved throughout the OS then it's now a non-option
for me.

------
dagaci
I only read personal mail in the web browser, its too much to maintain a mail
app if you have to do more than enter much more than enter your username and
password.

~~~
wlll
I think "entering in a few details about 10 years ago into Mail.app" is a
little hard to describe as "maintain".

I have to go to far more effort for my email accounts that are still web
based, having to sign in every so often and do the 2fa dance.

------
temporallobe
Stuff like this is why I have moved to Mint and macOS for my personal everyday
computing. I used to love “classic” Windows (XP and 7, even Vista to some
degree). I still use Windows 10 Enterprise on one of my government-issued
project laptops, but that’s almost a completely different OS in many ways. I
don’t think you can even buy the Enterprise version for personal use, because
if I could, I would.

~~~
malshe
If you don't mind my asking, what's Mint?

~~~
danbolt
I think the author is speaking about Linux Mint[1], which is a flavour of
Ubuntu with some quality-of-life additions.

[1] [https://linuxmint.com/](https://linuxmint.com/)

~~~
temporallobe
Yes indeed, Linux Mint! I have even put it on my daughter's laptop and she
really likes it (she had endless problems with Windows 10 constantly updating
and being extremely slow, sometimes she'd have to wait for hours for an update
to complete, disrupting her homework). It's a pretty darn good user-centric
Linux distro based on Ubuntu.

------
wpdev_63
I am currently using mailspring[0] and it might be the best email client I've
ever used. Highly recommend it, it blows window's built in client out the
water.

[0]: [https://getmailspring.com/](https://getmailspring.com/)

------
progetpro
that's not a big deal for me, I know how Microsoft going to play ads.

I have put all the ips of ads and microsoft in hosts file. I don't see ads in
skype more.

If this day would come I will dump all microsoft store app. I am using dws
lite for disable all uwp grabage in my windows 10

------
danielor
Soon, I will have targeted ads on my coffee mugs... This is getting out of
control.

~~~
swiley
Hasn't McDonald's been doing that since forever?

~~~
danielor
So, true. :)

------
thrower123
Well, there's one more reason not to use that piece of garbage. It's not like
it was usable to begin with, so splattering it with ads is sort of like if a
tree falls alone in the woods.

It's breathtaking how bad the Windows Store and the apps available there
remain, what, four or five years now after the start of this Modern
Windows/UWP push. Complete miscalculation.

------
juststeve
another reason not to install windows 10

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jklinger410
Pay for Windows, get bloatware and ads. Pay for Mac OS...don't.

Use Google, get everything for free subsidized by ads. Pay for Windows, still
get ads?

Hmmmmm

~~~
AsyncAwait
Get Linux for free, still don't get ads.

~~~
JorgeGT
Ubuntu not only came (or still comes?) with an Amazon app right on the
launcher, but also offered Amazon product suggestions when you were using the
search function.

~~~
juststeve
use debian, mint or arch

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ppeetteerr
I don't see a problem with this. People mention how you "pay" for windows, but
the cost of windows is not a fixed price, it's a recurring price thanks to
Microsoft's support system and backend services. Putting an ad into the email
client is no different than what Google does, minus the small upfront cost
that Windows charges. Don't want ads, pay for Outlook or use a Mac/Linux.
Easy.

