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Go back to 2005, would you have believed "automatically installed ads on your Start Menu" would be anything other than a joke from Futurama? Yet here we are.
by SavantIdiot 6y ago
Go back to 2005, would you have believed "automatically installed ads on your Start Menu" would be anything other than a joke from Futurama?
Yet here we are.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoWindows 98 came with ads in Active Desktop
- SavantIdiot 6y agoI stand corrected. I had to google it, and I completely forgot that brief period of chaos where desktop was a web page. Ughhh... At least it was "opt in", which is my feeble attempt at hanging on to my argument that MS is more nefarious now than before. :)
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoWell, they weren't really "ads" - just prepopulated links in the Active Channels list to major media websites. it wasn't just the US with links to Disney, other localized versions of Windows 98 had prepopulated Active Channels to local media companies (e.g. if you set Windows 98 to the UK then you'd get links to Sky and the BBC). I don't think Microsoft was paid to include those links, part of me really thinks the PMs behind the feature just really wanted to show it off and get buy-in from those media companies.