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Windows Thin Edge of the Wedge

I am getting concerned about the number of adverts I’m seeing on Windows these days. It feels like the ‘thin end of the wedge’ principle happening in real-time— one small change, if not opposed, can lead to greater changes later on.

For example, those ‘offers’ from Microsoft in the Start menu seem innocuous enough, and closing them is easy. But why would Microsoft stop placing them? It can hardly cost Microsoft any money to put them there, so any orders they get from the ad count as pure profit.

At this point, the wedge remains thin. But it’ll start to get thicker once people get used to the ads, encouraging Microsoft to go and sell the space to other companies. At first, this might be a ‘suggested’ offer from Amazon or Norton. The grumbles on Twitter will continue, but enough people will click the links to spur Microsoft to thicken the wedge even more by showing flashing ads from every Tom, Dick, and McDonald’s.

I’ll then realize a few weeks later, as I see Jamie Foxx’s face on my lock screen telling me to get a new Intel laptop, that the wedge has finally gotten too thick. Once Microsoft opens a Pandora’s Box of advertising, it will be impossible to close.

–D. Reardon

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GUY COCKER, RESPONDS: Mr. Reardon is probably right that adverts in Windows are only going to get more prominent and appear across more sections of the operating system. Having seen the way these things go in the past, Microsoft will inevitably go too far—maybe with adverts being plastered on the lock screen as he suggests— and be forced to backtrack.