From pcgamer.com on the ad in Windows Explorer:

Update: In a statement to The Verge, senior Windows program manager Brandon LeBlanc said "This was an experimental banner that was not intended to be published externally and was turned off.” So it looks like the addition of ads at this point was unintentional.

You don't need to read more to know the key phrase here is "at this point".

I've complained a bit that the store is taking over Windows and iOS, heck, even Firefox:

From techcrunch.com late last year:

What’s maybe most important, though, is that Mozilla’s new products like its Mozilla VPN service, Firefox Relay Premium, Pocket and other commercial initiatives are slowly but surely starting to pay off.  As Mozilla executive VP Angela Plohman and CFO Eric Muhlheim noted in today’s announcement, revenue from new product offerings will grow 150% this year and account for 14% of the organization’s revenue in 2021. The Mozilla VPN service saw a revenue increase of 450% from 2020 to 2021.

Windows shows me advertisements for Edge, and Edge tries to tell me that there are better deals on what I'm trying to buy on Amazon. It's a slippery slope.

Anyone who thinks that this ad from Windows Explorer was a "mistake" is fooling themselves.

But in the same vein as my, "Someday, we'll be more worried when everyone can't see our location all the time" argument, it's not like ads are inherently evil. It's just that the ones that fill the internet now stink out loud. That is, if you sold me something I wanted with amazing accuracy and kept the info about me on my box, I'd probably be impressed.

There are useful ways to present ads. Asking if you want to autowrite your way to success is not one of them.

Labels: advertising, hats o' money, windows