Just wonderful - Windows 8.1 has a new feature. Advertising.
From
Geek:
The Windows 8.1 Search app is going to get plastered with ads
One big change Microsoft trumpeted for Windows 8.1 was a greatly improved Search app that could now pull in Bing results for your queries. What it glossed over was the fact that the new search experience will also be serving up advertisements.
Clues that ads were coming to the desktop in Windows 8.1 were scattered throughout a blog post on the Bing Ads community (apparently that�s a thing that exists) site. �Bing Ads will be an integral part of this new Windows 8.1 Smart Search experience,� said Microsoft search ad boss David Pann.
Advertisers don�t even need to do any extra work. If they�re already part of the Yahoo Bing advertising machine, their ads are locked and loaded and can be blasted at a user�s desktop at will.
It�s easy enough to understand why Microsoft wants to do this. It�s all about expanding the reach of its advertising partners and monetizing Bing searches. That said, it�s too bad that the Windows 8.1 search app is considered fair game.
Bing sucks so it is not like I am going to be using any time soon. I picked up a bunch of copies of Windows 7 at the MSFT company store and will be hoarding these like I did with my Windows XP disks.
An app to counteract this will be written in 3... 2... 1...
I wonder what nimrod at Microsoft thought of this idea.
Posted by DaveH at July 5, 2013 10:39 PM