Microsoft's big Windows 8 secret? It's actually about advertising.

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/11/24/microsofts-big-windows-8-secret-its-actually-about-advertising/

by Reltair • 14 years ago

24 64 14 years ago

thenextweb.com

meaty12• 14 years ago

Yes if you've seen Xbox music app, its a big advert which is annoying.

mtgx2• 14 years ago

They're doing it with Skype, too.

kvb3• 14 years ago

The Xbox music store serves as both a music player as well as a music store. I don't consider showing content from the store as advertising. Is iTunes also "a big advert"?

meaty12• 14 years ago

However it pushes the store part in your face constantly even if you do not desire it, which is a shame as the DLNA stuff works well.

shinratdr2• 14 years ago

> The Xbox music store serves as both a music player as well as a music store.

Yet it's called the "Xbox Music Store" making it very clear where their priorities lie. iTunes is iTunes and can also access the iTunes Store. It's not "iTunes Store, Play Music Also".

> I don't consider showing content from the store as advertising.

Many disagree.

> Is iTunes also "a big advert"?

Nope, because the line between the iTunes Store and iTunes is quite clear. It ends when you click that "iTunes Store" link in the sidebar. Up until then, you'll see no advertisements or artists promoted.

Is the iTunes Store a big advert? Definitely. However it's a store, most are plastered with advertising. That is normal.

Ads in your music player isn't normal. If you're willing to accept it, that's completely different and entirely your prerogative. Many others feel they already absorb plenty of advertising and aren't interested in providing new avenues to reach them, especially ones through products that they paid for.

barrkel2• 14 years ago

iTunes being a forcefeed of ads is one of the reasons I detest it, and similarly for Steam's store. Absolutely detest being bombarded with crap I didn't ask or search for. I actively buy things elsewhere to avoid the ads.

kevhsu• 14 years ago

if you go into settings, you can change xbox music to open directly to "My Music"

Xbox music has actually been one of the highlights of my overall negative Windows 8 experience. The free streaming service has a fairly extensive library.

blahedo• 14 years ago

Sci fi authors have, for decades now, envisioned a future with ubiquitous, pervasive advertising. That doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it, but we shouldn't really be surprised....

merty• 14 years ago

This reminded me of the future of the television in the Idiocracy.

https://montevallotimetravel.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/idi...

Evbn3• 14 years ago

Looks like YouTube.

evo_9• 14 years ago

"Transmitting" advertisement/commercials into our dream ala Futurama cannot be far off (I hope I'm wrong). Perhaps this would be something a hotel could offer to reduce the cost of the room? Trying to think of a positive application of this idea.

Evbn3• 14 years ago

Brave New World: learn a foreign language while you sleep, as well as subliminal indoctrination.

dmix• 14 years ago

> Ten years ago Microsoft was in trouble for bundling Internet Explorer, but now bundling applications laden with advertising is okay?

How are those two even correlated?

Adding ads to your product is not breaking anti-trust laws.

mtgx2• 14 years ago

It might if they're only using their own ad network for those ads, and competing ad networks are not allowed to get inserted in there. They would be leveraging their OS monopoly to push their ad network.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong about them only using their own ad network, and not allowing developers to choose other networks for their apps.

justanotheratom• 14 years ago

Microsoft has its own SDK for Adds in Apps, but I am not sure whether other ad networks are disallowed:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh506371(MSADS.10).a...

inerte• 14 years ago

You can chose any ad network http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj19359...

Metrop0218• 14 years ago

It's actually about services. By having services like Xbox music, video, and live come bundled with the system they're trying to increase subscriptions and purchases. Ads no doubt will play a role but this article exaggerates it.

shinratdr2• 14 years ago

Don't forget Office 365.

notatoad• 14 years ago

Most of the 'ads' in windows are actually just promotion of those services, or content available through those services. It's something that every other commercial OS does with their first party apps - iTunes is full of promos for iTunes content. But an article titled 'Windows 8 is about services' doesn't get as many pageviews as 'Windows 8 is about ads'.

recoiledsnake4• 14 years ago

Google "Play: Store does this too just to download an Android app.

http://www.androidpipe.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Downlo...

kvb3• 14 years ago

I really think this issue is overblown. Someone could literally use the Weather app for years without realizing there's an ad in it, for instance, because you have to scroll way over to the right to see it (past the daily forecast, the weekly forecast, the hourly forecast, national weather maps, and a historical weather chart). Since I typically care about the local weather over a short period, I never see the ads in the app.

CamperBob23• 14 years ago

About all that can be said in response is that if true, your experience will be treated as a bug report, and promptly assigned to someone to fix.

kvb3• 14 years ago

Take a look at the images in this article by Ed Bott: http://www.zdnet.com/how-outraged-should-you-be-about-ads-in... (also linked from this story). You think maybe it was a mere oversight that the ads all appear where they are completely unobtrusive? Seems more likely to me that Microsoft is trying to get some ad revenue while intentionally presenting the minimum possible annoyance to users.

SquareWheel3• 14 years ago

They even put ads in Minesweeper. Minesweeper!

I used to pop open Minesweeper and play a game in 30 seconds. Now it takes 30 seconds to get through loading screens and all this "Xbox live integration" crap. I hate it. Who really wants "achievements"? I just want a fast loading game that I can throw on a USB stick.

For all the improvements they've made in the Desktop space, the direction they're heading with Metro is so awful for power users.

CamperBob23• 14 years ago

Minesweeper? Really?

Hopefully, the people who laughed at Gabe Newell and Notch for being "paranoid" are starting to get it now.

Encosia8• 14 years ago

That doesn't match my experience at all. Just to check my sanity, I flipped open Minesweeper and played a game on easy. Between the loading time and my 23 second win, I spent about the 30 seconds you mentioned from start to finish entirely. I didn't notice any ads at all, and the only Xbox Live interaction I saw was the non-modal growl-like notice that I was signed into Xbox Live as Encosia.

Also, there's nothing about Windows 8 that prevents you from running an older Minesweeper.exe from a USB stick like you mentioned.

Speaking of ads, here's a panorama of the entire app: http://encosia.com/i/minesweeper-wide/. The ad only takes up about 4.5% of the landscape, in the least conspicuous possible spot. That ad is like putting a small banner ad in the footer of a website. If you're jumping into the app to play a game of Minesweeper, you'd never even see the ad unless you're using a 4,850 pixel wide display.

SquareWheel3• 14 years ago

I find the ad more offensive than obtrusive. This is an operating system I paid for, one where Minesweeper has traditionally been bundled - for free, and without advertising. This also changes the dynamic where now Microsoft has a vested interest in learning everything they can about me to deliver more relevant ads to improve click-through rates. The whole idea of my OS tracking me sends shivers up my spine.

    Also, there's nothing about Windows 8 that prevents you from running an older Minesweeper.exe from a USB stick like you mentioned.

For now. It's clear the direction that MS is taking Windows though, and I don't know how long I can reasonably expect to have such control. And if I want to throw that older exe onto a new WinRT machine, it would not function.

Evbn3• 14 years ago

The heck?! 4000pixels, and the game itself isn't even visible!

pbhjpbhj6• 14 years ago

>Speaking of ads, here's a panorama of the entire app: http://encosia.com/i/minesweeper-wide/ . //

I don't get it, which app. It says minesweeper, where are the mines? Is this like the minesweeper starter app, did they feel interstitials were so loved on the web that they wanted to give people more of them?

Also, don't they have any designers at MS or is mis-alignment the new grid? Or perhaps there's some cunning reason [other than making it stand out more in the most annoying fashion] that the advert should not adhere to the grid of the rest of the content.

meaty12• 14 years ago

I did a before and after for Minesweeper.

http://i.imgur.com/bv1NY.jpg

If that's not crack smoking, what is?

jonchang• 14 years ago

Minesweeper only has ads if you play the new "Minesweeper Adventure" mode or the "Daily Challenges" mode. If you play the classic mode there are no ads.

pbhjpbhj6• 14 years ago

Encosia's link shows [what appears to be] an interstitial with an ad, can you bypass that and go straight to the game?

meaty12• 14 years ago

Well that's a new level of bloatware.

radley• 14 years ago

I'm predicting Metro's primary home screen will switch over to M$ ads within 3 years to match the XBox.

moolcool• 14 years ago

Remember when software with built in ads was called adware and we had to install special programs to get rid of it?

weego• 14 years ago

I was going to say exactly this, metro screen is a way of transitioning the same way the Xbox UI has.

recoiledsnake4• 14 years ago

I yearn for the early days when the juvenile 'M$' was against HN etiquette and was properly dealt with. Now HN is more like Slashdot and that's reflected into the story selection, comments, moderation and flagging.

pbhjpbhj6• 14 years ago

I won't downvote him because he made a reasonable point and I can't see what level of score he has. In the past with scores visible one could (if desired) vote towards a goal, so keep his comment positive because he added to the conversation but not too high because of the mode of speech.

Arguably downvoting based on a particular manner of conveying his dislike of overt money grabbing like this would be as juvenile, if not more so, than expressing oneself in the manner of the GP.

lumberjack• 14 years ago

All these changes from the traditional Windows DE to this new thing they have with Windows 8 prompts the inevitable question: What are they going to do for corporate and businesses? Are they going to try to push the same interface for the typical office working environment?

majormajor• 14 years ago

Ads in desktop software have seemed on their way for a long time, but the only high-profile bundled-with-the-OS example I can think of before this is Apple's Sherlock that came with Mac OS 8.5 and 9.

That was a bit of a special case, for similar reasons to the ones in Metro apps. Search engines had ads anyway, so ads in a program that gave you search results in a desktop app wasn't a huge leap. (There was still significant backlash, though.) And ads in mobile apps are fairly commonplace, MS has just gone a step further integrating them into their first-party ones. Which is a curious decision—how much revenue are we really talking about?

I also feel like there's an interesting parallel between Sherlock—a specialized program for getting results from the internet—and "apps" in the mobile sense. They're both ways to get around at-the-time-limited web user experiences. Desktop apps like Sherlock, though, did not last particularly long as the web itself got more usable.

barrkel2• 14 years ago

Every day, we’re bombarded with advertising. Billboards. TV. Internet. Flyers. Cereal. Shoes. Advertising comes in every form and flavor, and it’s impossible to get away from.

This isn't true. I seldom see billboards (I live in the city, looking at the traffic is more than enough); I don't have a TV, I don't get flyers, don't eat cereal, and use adblock in my browser. It's very very rare for me to see ads outside of free apps for my android devices, and those generally go away once I buy the non-free versions.

I do not expect an OS I pay for to show me ads, and I'll reject any such OS as maliciously attacking my attention span.

pbhjpbhj6• 14 years ago

>I don't have a TV, I don't get flyers, don't eat cereal, and use adblock in my browser. //

Don't visit shops?

We don't watch broadcast TV and having used adblock for many years I find the messiness of un-filtered internet almost unbearable. However we get flyers posted through our door and I still occasionally buy things online (which come with flyers and adverts either at checkout or in the box) and I go shopping where advertising and marketing interfere at every shelf with the buying process. Then there's vehicle wraps, hoardings, posters and billboards, clothing based advertising, and all the usual paraphernalia of the street. Letters home from school, the inside cover at the back of the book you finished, the start of a DVD with its no-skip "feature". The rich host of a BBC program plugging their book (they're supposed not to allow advertising¹) ...

Where do you live, not in "The West" surely?

- - -

¹ But they let very rich people advertised on there anyway whilst being fastidious about removing any semblance of a logo for small companies or when the advert would be entirely incidental.

Microsoft's big Windows 8 secret? It's actually about advertising.

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