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...