Serving ads in the start menu. Serving ads on the screen saver. Serving bing search result in the start menu. OS coming with an advertising ID. Collecting data on usage, browsing habits, and god knows what else.
You are pretending they are not treating their customers as product and every windows install comes with an advertising ID? What is the advertising ID there for then?
"Serving ads in the start menu?" Fascinating. My start menu never had ads...
It did have a "setup skype" which is part of their "get skype" campaign, but that was already installed. It did have the "activate your office" stuff but again, I already had those...
Do you mean the store livetile that sometimes shows product pictures?
> Serving bing search result in the start menu.
Bing is the second most popular search engine in the US, and uh... the sad insider truth is that Bing searches are less of a privacy exposure that Duck Duck Go or Google. But whatever...
Ubuntu was doing this forever. So was Firefox. They get paid to set your default search engine. To the tune of millions.
> Collecting data on usage, browsing habits, and god knows what else.
I mean, you can see what they send back if you're so inclined. It's not hard. You can even find articles where people have done that analysis.
> OS coming with an advertising ID
And you think... your cellphone... doesn't have one of these? Or your Mac doesn't have a distinct ID for the purposes of Mac store purchases? Or that Canonical didn't make a "Store ID" for their store?
Do you think websites also aren't doing this? In ways that Do Not Track can never even address?
If Microsoft is your whipping boy for this, then you've got a lot of anger to direct towards them. But the reality is that your entire digital experience is heavily instrumented. And you know what? We're instrumenting them because it's the only way we can possibly do what users ask us to do. We desperately need telemetry on failure, user engagement, and performance. Otherwise our customers choose products that CAN make changes based on these things.
Simply put, the Market has spoken. You kinda have to look in awe at Microsoft for being able to put this off for so long. But with the complete collapse of Desktop Linux as a serious contender there are only a few shops in town that service OSs and they're locked in frantic competition to produce what most people treat as a commodity.
> I mean, you can see what they send back if you're so inclined.
How can I do that? Everything I read says that the connections are encrypted and that there is no way to observe what gets sent.
> advertising ID
I do have a similar aversion for the spying on users on mobiles. Which is why I would never touch an Android phone even with a stick. And why the first thing I do with an iphone is to lock it down. And I do get annoyed with the iOS nagging too (please use icloud, please use apple music, please use apple pay, you are playing a song, let me show you apple music again, you updated your OS, let's start the nagging back from the begining! iOS used to be a user friendly OS...). But that doesn't mean it justifies making my desktop a crap experience too. Do you guys see this as a race to the bottom?
As for websites, like probably 90% of HN readers, I use ad blockers and also leave javascript disabled except for a handful of sites that deserve it.
What makes me angry is not so much that you are stuffing your OS with this shit. Do that on the cheap home version, very well. Happy to pay a premium to avoid it. But that you do that on all versions of Windows including pro, and you make your users play whack-a-mole with the privacy settings to switch that off if it is even possible. This is not a game I want to play. And for that reason I see Windows 10 as an unsuitable OS for a desktop. And nagging me more to upgrade is only going to further alienate me.
> But that doesn't mean it justifies making my desktop a crap experience too. Do you guys see this as a race to the bottom?
No. I see it as a tacit acknowledgement that software isn't free, but no one actually wants to pay for it. If you'd be willing to pay $500 for a mobile phone OS, maybe. But then that'd have its own problems.
Everyone wants to pretend software is free. Apple's busy making iOS software unsustainably priced. So we find other ways to stay in business.
And then listen to people like you tell us, "What you're doing is ethically wrong because I sang 'free the software' with Richard Stallman." Either I find a way to instrument and monetize and keep our payroll going or you are running shit like gentoo forever and your experience is terrible.
> What makes me angry is not so much that you are stuffing your OS with this shit.
"My" OS? Why is this suddenly "my" OS? Do you think I am on the payroll for Microsoft, Google or Apple? My identity is well established and my employer is trivial to verify.
> Happy to pay a premium to avoid it.
It's nice being rich and leaving the poor to suffer, isn't it? Yes. I know.
But windows isn't free. I am paying a license for it. And I don't have any problem with that. I am glad you refer to these ads as users suffering. But it is the principle of free services like those by Google. People make a pact with the devil, they sell there privacy in exchange of a free service. If it works for them, good for them. I don't want to do that and am happy to pay for it. In exchange I am NOT selling my privacy.
And you lead me to think you are somehow affiliated to Microsoft. I didn't do any research on you. Quoting you: I helped build the technology that made Bing competitive, And you know what? We're instrumenting them because it's the only way we can possibly do what users ask us to do. We desperately need telemetry on failure, user engagement, and performance.
If you don't want people to think you are not affiliated to MSFT, better not to use we.
> But windows isn't free. I am paying a license for it. And I don't have any problem with that. I am glad you refer to these ads as users suffering.
You're paying a HEAVILY subsidized cost. If it was priced at an actual reasonable price, it would never sell. The same is true of basically all software now. VERY few people have held the line here. Especially given the user expectations of infinite free updates.
> People make a pact with the devil, they sell there privacy in exchange of a free service.
This is just... it's just not true. You can't blame people without means for wanting to engage with our digital society and economy. They need to, it's critical. And you can't blame vendors for struggling to find a way to charge what people can afford. We're all struggling to find a way to make people's growing software exceptions doable.
And of course, free software advocates being smug even as their OSs and UXs are piles of antiquated tire fires. With every credible corporate entity adopting these techniques as it is, or funding their development off the backs of the overpriced enterprise model that raises prices in the first point!
You are pretending they are not treating their customers as product and every windows install comes with an advertising ID? What is the advertising ID there for then?