4 ms·

My history is rusty, but the first ads in Windows were probably in Windows 8 live tiles in the Start Menu. (Not including Internet Explorer being forced upon ev

My history is rusty, but the first ads in Windows were probably in Windows 8 live tiles in the Start Menu. (Not including Internet Explorer being forced upon everyone.) But it expanded from there - there are ads in Settings encouraging browser choice and discouraging changes to default applications. Ads all over your first-run experience. Ads in the taskbar encouraging you to use Edge and Teams. The ad system is heavily integrated into Explorer / taskbar. Which is how poorly constructed ads can break such vital operating machinery.

ByteWelder 5y ago
Even ads on the lock screen (for Microsoft Edge) and through MS-certified drivers (e.g. Corsair iCue, Dolby Atmos).
drcongo 5y ago
And they charge you to use this?
- neogodless 5y ago
  Sort of? I've been building PCs for about 20 years, and when doing it for others, I'd have them buy a license. For myself, the only time I can recall buying a Windows license was for Windows Home Server and WHS 2011. I got a free Windows 7 Ultimate license, which I have now upgraded through 8/8.1 to 10 Pro. But yes, a mainstream Windows user pays for a Windows license, either through a direct license purchase, or through the baked in price of a machine. Most users did not pay to upgrade machines from 7/8/8.1 to 10, but that was a bargain with the devil, as it made it easier on the decision-makers at Microsoft to find other ways to make money off of Windows 10 users.
  - drcongo 5y ago
    What a horror story, thanks for the comprehensive answer.
  - sharken 5y ago
    Part of setting up a Win 10 machine should include disabling telemetry, even though it's not easy. https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collection-in-windows-10/ https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collec... It probably won't be long before the Windows 11 version is here.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > Most users did not pay to upgrade machines from 7/8/8.1 to 10, but that was a bargain with the devil Bargain with the devil? Most users didn't pay to upgrade machines from 7/8 to 10 because they had nothing to gain from the upgrade. You only bargain to get things that you want.
    - reissbaker 5y ago
      Er, no, they didn't pay because Microsoft offered the upgrade for free. They did upgrade, they just didn't pay to do so. Hence "a bargain with the devil."
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        And I'm saying that, if the upgrade had cost money, they wouldn't have done it. Look at the number of people who upgraded from 7 to 8.
        neogodless 5y ago
        Most people want the new and shiny even if a select few prefer the stable, safe choice. Mainstream preferences overwhelm the tech savvy. Already I see forum threads on Slickdeals where people are talking about how important it is for any computer you buy to be Windows 11 ready...
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Barely. You've been able to upgrade for free for at least 10 years, and even a new license is like £30. It's not surprising they're trying to add adverts. Sucks though.
  - profunctor 5y ago
    Where can I get a legit license for £30?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - n3dm 5y ago
      eBay
  - alpaca128 5y ago
    Windows 10/Pro costs 145/259€. If you paid 30 bucks you paid for a stolen or otherwise illegally sold license. > You've been able to upgrade for free for at least 10 years Actually it's 6 years. There were no free upgrades before Windows 10 as far as I'm aware.
    - IshKebab 5y ago
      > If you paid 30 bucks you paid for a stolen or otherwise illegally sold license. Citation needed. https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/get-windows-10-free-or-cheap,5717.html https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/get-windows-10-free-... > Now, let's address the elephant in the room. While we can't vouch for all of them, websites selling lower-priced Windows keys are likely selling legitimate codes. One popular site, Kinguin, has 37 merchants worldwide selling Windows keys. Mark Jordan, Kinguin’s VP of communications, told Tom's Hardware in 2019 that Kinguin's merchants acquire the codes from wholesalers who have surplus copies of Windows they don't need. > "It's not a gray market. It would be like buying Adidas or Puma or Nike from a discounter, from TJ Maxx," Jordan said. "There are no legal issues with buying it from us. It's just another marketplace." > According to Jordan, Kinguin's merchants have sold “several hundred thousand” keys and are not one-time sellers posting listings for codes they don’t want. As part of its fraud protection, a Kinguin employee randomly buys a key “every now and then” to make sure they’re legitimate, he said. Jordan added that it’s rare for a customer to get a key that’s been resold, but if they did, customer support would help them get a new one for free.
- xtracto 5y ago
  This reminds me of the "Gmail man" video Microsoft released mocking Gmail mail snooping to show you ads. Well... nowadays MS is waaaay ahead of that, with ads at the OS level.
mortenlarsen 5y ago
Not the first ad related issue. Ads in Skype ran unsandboxed javascript, allowing filesystem access.
ProfessionalHat 5y ago
Yes, it looks like the ads started coming in when MS realized the potential earnings from a market dominant browser. Since they lost the browser war, they have now converted their operating system into a browser with integrated crap (like IE toolbars) in forms of bing search, cortana, app recommendations etc.
dboreham 5y ago
MS were talking to partners about selling ads on Win95 before it was released.
- quietbritishjim 5y ago
  Depending on whether you count internal properties, there's the MSN icon on the desktop by default on Win95.
chungy 5y ago
Windows 98 had the Channel Bar enabled by default, which was ostensibly just advertising.
- userbinator 5y ago
  That may have been something done by OEM bloatware, I don't remember anything like that showing up by default after a clean install of Win98.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    It wasn’t an OEM setting - it depends on your Windows 98 SKU and install options. I think the Active Channel bar was also hidden by default if your screen resolution wasn’t high enough - and it was gone by 98SE or IE5.5, I think?
    - userbinator 5y ago
      That might be why - I've never actually used the first edition of Win98, only 98SE. To relive the experience again, I just tried installing a VM from a 98SE retail ISO and besides installing rather quickly and booting up in around 5 seconds from power-on to desktop, the whole experience felt very serene in comparison to installing anything Win8 or later --- no continuous disk activity from a hundred background processes, no in-your-face adverts or notifications pestering you the first time you see the desktop, and no attempts at being cutesy or infantilising. You get one "Welcome to Windows" app that you can easily close (and it's a regular window, not a full-screen horrorshow) and elect to not show again, and the closest thing to an advert is a single "Setup MSN Internet Access" icon on the desktop. It doesn't do anything else until you tell it to. The OS behaves more like a tool, instead of treating you like one. More amusingly, the IE5 icon looks remarkably close to the Legacy Edge one --- it's just as flat --- and the VM shuts down in around 1 second.
      - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
        > no continuous disk activity from a hundred background processes That's because the computers at the time simply couldn't handle that kind of load. Things like telemetry and feature-usage tracking would have been things in the mid-1990s if we had the spare computing overhead space and persistent Internet connections, which we didn't - but now we do - so we have them. > the IE5 icon looks remarkably close to the Legacy Edge one --- it's just as flat --- and the VM shuts down in around 1 second. That's because you're likely in 16-color or 256-color mode instead of high-color (16-bit) or true-color (24/32-bit) modes - the desktop IE logo has never been flat-colored, though the logo itself is flat-colored in many places in Windows 98, also lets agree that the IE 7 logo is the worst IE logo ever. > and the VM shuts down in around 1 second. That's because it's a VM on modern hardware - on period-correct hardware it will still take Windows a while to boot and to shut-down. Though while Windows 9x does shut-down rather quickly, there's a reason for that: it doesn't have the same OS and filesystem consistency protections that Windows XP and later had: there's a reason we all typically reinstalled Windows 98 every 6 months or so: things break easily - whereas my current laptop hasn't had Windows reinstalled ever in the 4 years I've had it.

ByteWelder 5y ago

Even ads on the lock screen (for Microsoft Edge) and through MS-certified drivers (e.g. Corsair iCue, Dolby Atmos).

drcongo 5y ago

And they charge you to use this?

neogodless 5y ago
Sort of? I've been building PCs for about 20 years, and when doing it for others, I'd have them buy a license. For myself, the only time I can recall buying a Windows license was for Windows Home Server and WHS 2011. I got a free Windows 7 Ultimate license, which I have now upgraded through 8/8.1 to 10 Pro. But yes, a mainstream Windows user pays for a Windows license, either through a direct license purchase, or through the baked in price of a machine. Most users did not pay to upgrade machines from 7/8/8.1 to 10, but that was a bargain with the devil, as it made it easier on the decision-makers at Microsoft to find other ways to make money off of Windows 10 users.
- drcongo 5y ago
  What a horror story, thanks for the comprehensive answer.
- sharken 5y ago
  Part of setting up a Win 10 machine should include disabling telemetry, even though it's not easy. https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collection-in-windows-10/ https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collec... It probably won't be long before the Windows 11 version is here.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Most users did not pay to upgrade machines from 7/8/8.1 to 10, but that was a bargain with the devil Bargain with the devil? Most users didn't pay to upgrade machines from 7/8 to 10 because they had nothing to gain from the upgrade. You only bargain to get things that you want.
  - reissbaker 5y ago
    Er, no, they didn't pay because Microsoft offered the upgrade for free. They did upgrade, they just didn't pay to do so. Hence "a bargain with the devil."
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      And I'm saying that, if the upgrade had cost money, they wouldn't have done it. Look at the number of people who upgraded from 7 to 8.
      - neogodless 5y ago
        Most people want the new and shiny even if a select few prefer the stable, safe choice. Mainstream preferences overwhelm the tech savvy. Already I see forum threads on Slickdeals where people are talking about how important it is for any computer you buy to be Windows 11 ready...
IshKebab 5y ago
Barely. You've been able to upgrade for free for at least 10 years, and even a new license is like £30. It's not surprising they're trying to add adverts. Sucks though.
- profunctor 5y ago
  Where can I get a legit license for £30?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - n3dm 5y ago
    eBay
- alpaca128 5y ago
  Windows 10/Pro costs 145/259€. If you paid 30 bucks you paid for a stolen or otherwise illegally sold license. > You've been able to upgrade for free for at least 10 years Actually it's 6 years. There were no free upgrades before Windows 10 as far as I'm aware.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    > If you paid 30 bucks you paid for a stolen or otherwise illegally sold license. Citation needed. https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/get-windows-10-free-or-cheap,5717.html https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/get-windows-10-free-... > Now, let's address the elephant in the room. While we can't vouch for all of them, websites selling lower-priced Windows keys are likely selling legitimate codes. One popular site, Kinguin, has 37 merchants worldwide selling Windows keys. Mark Jordan, Kinguin’s VP of communications, told Tom's Hardware in 2019 that Kinguin's merchants acquire the codes from wholesalers who have surplus copies of Windows they don't need. > "It's not a gray market. It would be like buying Adidas or Puma or Nike from a discounter, from TJ Maxx," Jordan said. "There are no legal issues with buying it from us. It's just another marketplace." > According to Jordan, Kinguin's merchants have sold “several hundred thousand” keys and are not one-time sellers posting listings for codes they don’t want. As part of its fraud protection, a Kinguin employee randomly buys a key “every now and then” to make sure they’re legitimate, he said. Jordan added that it’s rare for a customer to get a key that’s been resold, but if they did, customer support would help them get a new one for free.
xtracto 5y ago
This reminds me of the "Gmail man" video Microsoft released mocking Gmail mail snooping to show you ads. Well... nowadays MS is waaaay ahead of that, with ads at the OS level.

mortenlarsen 5y ago

Not the first ad related issue. Ads in Skype ran unsandboxed javascript, allowing filesystem access.

ProfessionalHat 5y ago

Yes, it looks like the ads started coming in when MS realized the potential earnings from a market dominant browser. Since they lost the browser war, they have now converted their operating system into a browser with integrated crap (like IE toolbars) in forms of bing search, cortana, app recommendations etc.

dboreham 5y ago

MS were talking to partners about selling ads on Win95 before it was released.

quietbritishjim 5y ago
Depending on whether you count internal properties, there's the MSN icon on the desktop by default on Win95.

chungy 5y ago

Windows 98 had the Channel Bar enabled by default, which was ostensibly just advertising.

userbinator 5y ago
That may have been something done by OEM bloatware, I don't remember anything like that showing up by default after a clean install of Win98.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  It wasn’t an OEM setting - it depends on your Windows 98 SKU and install options. I think the Active Channel bar was also hidden by default if your screen resolution wasn’t high enough - and it was gone by 98SE or IE5.5, I think?
  - userbinator 5y ago
    That might be why - I've never actually used the first edition of Win98, only 98SE. To relive the experience again, I just tried installing a VM from a 98SE retail ISO and besides installing rather quickly and booting up in around 5 seconds from power-on to desktop, the whole experience felt very serene in comparison to installing anything Win8 or later --- no continuous disk activity from a hundred background processes, no in-your-face adverts or notifications pestering you the first time you see the desktop, and no attempts at being cutesy or infantilising. You get one "Welcome to Windows" app that you can easily close (and it's a regular window, not a full-screen horrorshow) and elect to not show again, and the closest thing to an advert is a single "Setup MSN Internet Access" icon on the desktop. It doesn't do anything else until you tell it to. The OS behaves more like a tool, instead of treating you like one. More amusingly, the IE5 icon looks remarkably close to the Legacy Edge one --- it's just as flat --- and the VM shuts down in around 1 second.
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      > no continuous disk activity from a hundred background processes That's because the computers at the time simply couldn't handle that kind of load. Things like telemetry and feature-usage tracking would have been things in the mid-1990s if we had the spare computing overhead space and persistent Internet connections, which we didn't - but now we do - so we have them. > the IE5 icon looks remarkably close to the Legacy Edge one --- it's just as flat --- and the VM shuts down in around 1 second. That's because you're likely in 16-color or 256-color mode instead of high-color (16-bit) or true-color (24/32-bit) modes - the desktop IE logo has never been flat-colored, though the logo itself is flat-colored in many places in Windows 98, also lets agree that the IE 7 logo is the worst IE logo ever. > and the VM shuts down in around 1 second. That's because it's a VM on modern hardware - on period-correct hardware it will still take Windows a while to boot and to shut-down. Though while Windows 9x does shut-down rather quickly, there's a reason for that: it doesn't have the same OS and filesystem consistency protections that Windows XP and later had: there's a reason we all typically reinstalled Windows 98 every 6 months or so: things break easily - whereas my current laptop hasn't had Windows reinstalled ever in the 4 years I've had it.