Is Microsoft Cheapening Android with Ads Too? (Premium)

Depending on your definition of what constitutes an advertisement, Microsoft has been polluting the Windows waters with ads for years, maybe even decades. In the mid-1990s, for example, Microsoft was forced to advertise competing online services in Windows 95 when it bundled its own service, The Microsoft Network, with the OS. But with Windows 8 in 2012, Microsoft began literally publishing web-like advertisements in the apps it bundled with the OS. And that, to me, was a step too far.

As I wrote that year, for the first time, Microsoft had added “advertising in Windows 8, a move that I think cheapens the product.”

“Apologists will explain that these ads aren’t in the OS user interface, which is true, and that you really have to hunt for them in the apps in which they do appear, which is also true,” I wrote. “But this is a slippery slope, folks. If you accept a few banal ads in Windows 8 for $40, what would you accept in Windows 9 for $20? When does it stop? And why wouldn’t it get worse?”

I was never so right.

That slippery slope produced an avalanche of advertising in Windows 10, the successor to Windows 8, and Microsoft has escalated the addition of new ads ever since. Some are product bundling-type pushes. But many are just plain dumb.

Anyway, my rationale for not accepting ads in Windows is still sound today as well.

“Ads are unacceptable in Windows 8 for the same reason they’re unacceptable in the Xbox 360 Dashboard, another place where Microsoft is pushing the boundaries,” I noted. “You pay for these products, so they don’t need to be further subsidized. (And why Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers still see ads in the 360 is an insult I’ll never understand.)”

In case it’s not obvious, the reason that Microsoft added advertising to Windows is to prop up the platform’s sagging profits. With fewer and fewer new PCs being sold each year—remember, PC sales have fallen for seven years straight, and the market now sells only 2/3 the number of PCs it did at its peak—Microsoft has had to make up for the losses. Apple faces the same problem today, thanks to falling iPhone sales. But Apple is too classy to go the advertising route, so it is turning to paid services to make up the difference.

That Apple comparison is even more important than is immediately obvious. Do keep Apple in your mind as we move forward to the topic of today’s discussion.

This week, 9to5Google (and others) reported that Microsoft had begun slipping app advertising into Android’s Share and Open With menus.

“Through some sneaky methods on its various apps, Your Phone Companion being just one of those affected, Microsoft is taking advantage of two parts of the Android operating system to advertise its other applications,” the site noted. “This includes the share menu … [and] Microsoft is [also] taking advantage of the ‘open with’ menu on Android.”

For those not familiar with these user interfaces, here’s a quick rundown of what Microsoft is doing.

When you’re reading an article in an app, you can access a system-wide Share menu, similar to that in Windows 10, that lets you share what you’re reading with compatible apps. The Android Share menu is populated with apps that are installed on your phone, like Messages, Gmail, and Pocket, and it’s something I use regularly. What Microsoft is doing is adding entries in the Android Share menu for Microsoft apps that are not installed on your phone. So you’ll see entries like “OneDrive (install).”

Open With works similarly. When you try to open a file with no default app association, or after you’ve installed an app that can become a default app for certain file types, you will see a list of compatible apps in an Open With menu. From there, you can choose the app you want and change the default. Here, too, Microsoft is adding entries for Microsoft apps that are not installed. So you will see entries like “Word (Install).”

These entries require that you install some Microsoft app first. Your Phone Companion seems to be the biggest offender, but Word mobile apparently triggers some as well. I will once again point to my 2012 comments about advertising being a “slippery slope,” because Microsoft has apparently been doing this for “at least a few months,” and you know it’s only going to get worse.

One question, of course, is whether these two deeds constitute a crisis on the order of Windows 10 advertising. I don’t feel that they do, since the user would have had to have installed a Microsoft app for this to happen and the Your Phone Companion app, in particular, suggests a certain Microsoft/Windows bent on their part. But again, slippery slope. Where does this end?

Which leads to another question: Microsoft often cites the open nature of Android as being a key differentiator for the platform and, for it and its users, a key advantage: Microsoft is able to root into Android (pardon the pun) in a way that is simply not possible on iOS. Is this capability something that Microsoft could get away with on iOS? And if it tried, wouldn’t Apple block this behavior?

Of course it would.

And that’s the thing. Whatever you think about Apple, it has built a reputation in recent years around its protection of its users’ privacy and its notion that what happens on iPhone, stays on iPhone. Put simply, these Microsoft initiatives on Android can be seen as an advertisement … for using an iPhone instead.

Look, I respect Microsoft and choose to use their products. And despite a recent and unwelcome reacquaintance with its terrible past, I understand that the Microsoft of today is a better company than it used to be. But Microsoft is still a company. It’s still trying to drive users in a certain direction, and it is using advertising, in this case for its own products and services, to make that happen.

It’s not illegal. It may not even be unethical, though I suspect there will be different opinions on that one. But if you feel strongly that you as the owner of a device should have final say over what appears there and what does not, this kind of thing could be problematic. And it could drive you to choose Apple devices over Android. Which, I suspect, is not ultimately in Microsoft’s best interests.

This kind of thing is, of course, a gray area, and a tough road for Microsoft and others to navigate. But if it’s so easy to clutter the Android Share and Open With menus with apps a user has not even installed, one has to wonder what else is wrong with this platform and with Google’s lack of oversight.

Worse, Android Police points out that Microsoft is the only app developer on Android that engages in this behavior. Think about that for a moment. This company you may trust and respect is somehow the only app developer usurping Android by adding advertisements for its apps in the Android user interface. That is actually pretty damning. And a sad statement about Microsoft and its place in the mobile world.