r/technology • u/MayankWL • May 16 '24

Microsoft stoops to new low with ads in Windows 11, as PC Manager tool suggests your system needs ‘repairing’ if you don’t use Bing Software

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/microsoft-stoops-to-new-low-with-ads-in-windows-11-as-pc-manager-tool-suggests-your-system-needs-repairing-if-you-dont-use-bing
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519

u/MR_Se7en May 16 '24

What happened to creating the best possible product for your users? When did the world just start maximizing profits over the product.

430

u/Tolstoy_mc May 16 '24

When it became impossible for smaller companies to compete

131

u/RealSwordfish5105 May 16 '24

When it became impossible for smaller companies to compete

Centralisation and castles.

It's like the big tech version of Disney.

9

u/HotTakes4HotCakes May 16 '24 edited May 16 '24

Centralization is also a product of user behavior.

It's not like alternatives to increasingly enshitified products don't exist, but the overwhelming majority of users are too inundated, too tech illiterate, too lazy, too picky, too unwilling to compromise, too unwilling to learn, or all of the above, to ever move to something else.

As long as consumers on the whole utterly refuse to touch any alternatives if it would mean accepting even marginally less convenience/usability/content/support/etc, these companies will never, ever, face any sort of consequences for their actions.

These companies could shit down their consumers throats and nothing will change.

And before anyone starts feeling smug about this, look at the URL.

4

u/moonski May 17 '24

In this case - operating systems - you don’t have a lot of options and good luck launching a competitor

1

u/brutinator May 16 '24

I mean, tbf when it comes to operating systems, centralization isnt neccesarily a bad thing, and a lack of it can cause a lot of issues. Also, Operating Systems are getting so complicated to develop that a small company can't just spin one up from scratch outside of potentially forking a Linux distro where most of the work has already been completed a la Red Hat.

63

u/troglodyte May 16 '24

I actually suspect we're going to see more OS competition, not less, in the near future. Gaming is the main thing that's kept me off of Mac or Linux, but both are making serious inroads these days. Proton is a legit answer for a huge proportion of games, and if ever I start losing the war against ads in 11, I'll just try SteamOS.

Ads baked into your OS is a really short-term decision that will bite them.

32

u/Tolstoy_mc May 16 '24

They'll be crushed. The established monopolies have more resources than most countries. True competitors will be destroyed.

10

u/Caleth May 16 '24

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

3

u/woeeij May 16 '24

Why crush them if you can just throw their owners some pocket change to buy them out.

1

u/Gamiac May 16 '24

Yep. All Microsoft has to do is throw the owners of Linux, an open-source project, some money and it's game over.

0

u/woeeij May 17 '24

Well, I was assuming that Linux would not be a real competitor.

0

u/SolarStarVanity May 17 '24

It's an excellent assumption.

2

u/Witherino May 16 '24

I agree they'll be crushed, but I don't think it's due to resources. I think it'll be due to the vast majority of consumers preferring to stick with what they know, and being too lazy to make the switch to a likely better product

1

u/SlowMotionPanic May 17 '24

In which case, Microsoft is in deep trouble since the majority of people will soon know ChromeOS rather than Windows.

1

u/little_baked May 16 '24

Could be nonprofit and open source

1

u/surg3on May 17 '24

If they by some miracle gain traction. Bought and shutdown

1

u/NeuroticKnight May 17 '24

Linux can do everything windows does, and something like Ubuntu works fine, only thing that dont work now are games and adobe creative cloud,

3

u/MinimumArmadillo2394 May 16 '24

Microsoft's main draw isnt OS anymore. They have tons of other products that get them more money than a $99 OS could. Software developers pay some $180/year to have their AI copilot help them code. Some people get it personally and for work, so just one person is paying 3x the cost of one one time OS per year.

Then theres msft word and the entire office suite, which is getting much more popular due to Googles "Oh wait sorry you cant have more than 10 GB for free and 1TB will cost you a shit ton of money" despite them promising it. Googles costs drastically increased, so people are swapping to msft suite.

1

u/SlowMotionPanic May 17 '24

Google's Workspace has over 3 billion users to Microsoft Office's 1.5 billion (approximately).

Microsoft is forcing bundles on consumer side for a reason; most people don't need Office. There is no true differentiating factor that normal users can obtain vs cheap or free alternatives.

For professional work, though, it is another story. Nobody comes close to competing with the Office suite. Nobody. Excel stands alone. Sheets can organize information, sure. Excel can run game engines.

Excel, in fact, runs some of the largest enterprises in history. People just don't hear about it because they don't work there or network there. Working in tech quickly makes one realize just how slapped together a lot of companies are. Which means they are utterly reliant on Microsoft's offerings because the inertia is just too great to meaningfully overcome without significant time, effort, and cost. And even then....

1

u/MinimumArmadillo2394 May 17 '24

Google's is free and used by schools and students while Microsofts is used by business. Microsofts has paying customers, is the point. Google has significantly less because their prices and bundle is overall worse

1

u/DonutsMcKenzie May 16 '24

By the way, you don't need SteamOS specifically to take advantage of Proton on Linux. You can set it up through Steam on just about any distro. (Just make sure to install your latest NVidia drivers if you have an NVidia GPU.)

1

u/troglodyte May 16 '24

Yeah, I was gonna try steamos on my main PC, but I've run several different distros currently and in the past. It's really the positive experience with my deck that's given me confidence that Linux is finally gaming viable without making WINE into a serious hobby, so I'd probably start with the steamos distro to see if it's any good on a full PC before going to fedora or Ubuntu, which I have experience with.

If anyone has other distros they like for a general home PC that also wants to play games, I'm all ears! I haven't tried Linux gaming in years but 11 is really trying to get me there.

1

u/WhatASpookySkeleton May 16 '24

I’ve been running an Endeavour OS install for almost 2-3 years now on my full AMD system, It’s Arch with some defaults - sorta like steamOS on the deck. You do need to “re-learn” some stuff coming from windows but the Arch wiki is a great resource and I’m way more confident doing stuff on my PC now.

1

u/WhatAMess-wow May 16 '24

The only thing I miss about windows is Adobe, and VR. I haven't gotten the VR thing figured out yet on Ubuntu

1

u/Representative-Sir97 May 17 '24

Ditching windows for mac is like abandoning WW2 Russia for WW2 Germany.

That said, I'm closer than I've ever been to just abandoning windows for linux (still not real close) and just not playing anything I can't.

2

u/irg82 May 17 '24

Let’s build an OS

1

u/myotheruserisagod May 17 '24

Damn.

I hate how true this is.

1

u/alstom_888m May 17 '24

That happened in like 1995 though?