Ask Paul: January 27 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Let’s bid goodbye to January and usher in the weekend a bit early with another great set of reader questions.

Bing, Bung, Bonged

wright_is asks:

What is with Bing at the moment? Over the last few weeks (since just after Christmas, I think), a majority of blocked malware registered in the management console of our corporate anti-malware system seems to be coming from either Bing / the Edge home page directly, Bing search results or people clicking on articles on the Edge home page – mainly cached images or adverts. Is Microsoft suffering an attack and their malware detection isn’t working properly?

I’ve not heard about anything like this, sorry. Is anyone else experiencing anything like this? (That said, given the low quality of the content delivered through the Edge home page, it wouldn’t surprise me if hackers have figured out a way to deliver malware through low-quality content sources. Still, it seems like this would be quickly found and acted on.)

Subscriptions are a symptom and a problem

Daishi asks:

I’m curious why, when you are so keen to remind us that you saw the slippery slope of ads in Windows coming, you apparently can’t see the obvious other one related to subscription fees. Sure they might follow your suggestions and offer customers the option to pay just to remove ads to start with, but it feels pretty obvious that that’s not where it would stop.

Well, that was literally the point of Ads and Subscriptions are the Future … of Windows (Premium), that Microsoft’s creeping monetization of Windows users is a multipronged strategy that doesn’t just involve in-product advertising, but also more and more subscription services (and sponsored app shortcuts and more).

Now I’m sure you are going to bring up the Chris Capossela comment about offering subscriptions being a tacit admission that they know they’re doing something wrong to say that Microsoft knows that it would be going to far to make people pay to keep Windows working.

Well, yes, that was in that article, but I tried to refute it by noting that ad-free Outlook, a key perk of a paid Microsoft 365 consumer subscription, does the same thing by letting customers pay to remove an annoyance. To me, giving customers a choice between ads and paying to not get ads is a common-sense solution. We see this in many places (Spotify, for example). It’s not perfect, but it’s better than no choice.

But he was saying that about your suggestion for ad removal, so if they cross the subscription Rubicon for removing ads why not expand it to include products activation, the ability to replace native features that feed into their ad business like the browser, advanced features and enterprise SKUs just becoming higher tiers of payment? All of these things seem like very realistic further steps they’d take while telling us it was to help generate the revenue to pay for Windows development, but for some reason I don’t understand you seem adamant that they would stop at getting people to pay for removing ads.

I’m not sure that I’m adamant about that. And I don’t actually believe that they will ever offer a way to remove ads or whatever other annoyances are in Windows. I only wish that they would. And I feel that a paid/ad-free offering makes sense, ideally as part of a Microsoft subscription. But whatever. It’s just an idea. Another idea would be letting individual customers buy or upgrade to Enterprise Edition, which (I think) pretty much solves most of the issues we might have with Windows today. Plus, it wouldn’t add to subscription fatigue and the proliferation of subscriptions, which is another problem.

Should Microsoft keep Surface?

will asks:

With the latest earnest call, there were some interesting comments about the Surface line. I know this comes up every so often, but is Surface worth keeping around?  Yes, Microsoft has its own line of computers for it to use, but what’s the point and how good is it to be losing so much money? For what reason?

Surface has never made sense: it antagonized its biggest partners at a time when Microsoft was already forcing a version of Windows on them that no one wanted, and it literally caused all of them to adopt Chrome OS as a hedge. In the years since, Surface hasn’t fared well, and Chrome OS never took off in a meaningful way, so that has probably helped. But Surface has never been profitable, and its justifications today don’t make any sense: with the exception of the original 2-in-1 tablet form factor from Surface Pro, no Surface design has ever inspired PC makers to make similar designs en masse. Surface is a failure no matter how you measure it.

That said, I paradoxically like Surface. This is kind of a hard thing to explain, because it’s subjective and almost emotional, but I like the minimalist Surface design ethos and feel that it provides the Windows world with an overtly Mac-like look and feel that we don’t get elsewhere. I have issues with Surface as a product line, of course. Microsoft is slow to update products and slow to adopt technologies, like USB-C and Thunderbolt. They are perhaps too minimalistic, in some cases: would it kill you to add one more USB port when there is so much space there for it? Etc.

Ultimately, my opinion is that Surface doesn’t meet the bar for keeping it: the product line is not profitable, it does not inspire other PC makers to up their games, and there is nothing particularly unique about any of the models. At this point, I feel like Microsoft is keeping it around mostly to avoid embarrassment.

AliMaggs also asks:

When reading the reporting on Microsoft earnings, it struck me as unsurprising that the latest Surface devices have performed worse than expected as the marketing has been non-existent. I get that the focus has shifted since the “device and services” Steve Ballmer days of Windows Phone/Lumia and the early Surface devices, where Microsoft did massive takeover campaigns at Paddington Station and had national television campaigns with celebrity endorsements, but it still strikes me as strange. If I wasn’t a close follower of your site, and other Microsoft/technology sites, I wouldn’t know there were new Surfaces available.

Interesting. Promotion (or the lack of it) definitely plays a role, and tied to the comments above, they used to have retail stores where customers could at least get their hands on the PCs Today, not so much. I think the pricing is too high as well: you can’t just price products like Apple and assume the market will show up. When something is new or unknown, you need to give users a reason to try it. When Toyota started Lexus, for example, part of the push was that they offered Mercedes quality without the high prices.

Somewhat related, Unless you’re an enthusiast, you wouldn’t even be aware that the Surface Duo exists. Obviously, Duo was never going to be a mainstream phone, but it feels like more of a closely guarded secret than a consumer product. In the UK, at least, where both generations of the Duo have been available, Microsoft has never promoted it once.

This may have been by design, though just writing that I feel like I’m giving them more credit than they deserve, as if there’s some kind of strategy at play. Duo was never going to be a mainstream success but I assume the goal is to make it more so over subsequent generations and that the plan was always to move to folding displays as quickly as possible.

I’m not saying Surface devices would be flying off the shelves if only they would promote their latest range, or that Surface Duo could ever be a popular mainstream device that competes with the iPhone, but if you’re competing in any space, you’ve got to… Well, compete…

I agree. It’s better to do nothing than do something half-assed.

I guess what I’m asking is… Do you think this is simply Microsoft caring less about consumers and devices? Is Microsoft holding back on promoting Surface to reduce competition with their partners as overall PC sales decline? Or is it a general lack of strategy with consumers? Or something else?

I don’t think they care less, and I know they want a bigger slice of the consumer market. But I think they at least realize that nothing they are doing will energize consumers in the way that Apple products do and that these devices are really positioned mostly for those businesses that want to go all-in on Microsoft. My guess is that few have taken them up on the hardware side so far.

Google Workspace

SherlockHolmes asks:

Hi Paul, I was wondering about what you think about Google Workspace as an E-Mail solution. I know your primary E-Mail account is an Google Workspace account.

Yes. Through a strange coincidence, my [email protected] email address was on Google because I was experimenting with different services. And when I moved to BWW, they were on Google Workspace so it made sense to keep it there. From a usability/quality perspective, I will say that I did find it superior to Outlook.com at that time. But I feel like I could use Outlook.com (or Outlook on the Web) now without issue. I like the aesthetic of it, with the modern ribbon, fonts, icons, and so on.

Does Google really dont do all that bad things they do with private accounts like scanning your inbox for placing ads? The thing is I work for a education organization inside the protestant church in Germany and we are thinking of switching to Google Workspace. Is it safe in terms of privacy and data protection? Thanks.

I haven’t examined their privacy statements to any degree, but I suspect there are different levels of privacy across Google Workspace for consumers (Gmail), businesses, and education, and that the education version is the most private of the three. There is some information about Google Workspace for Education here. And a FAQ here, which says only that Google “scans Gmail to keep users’ mail secure,” suggesting that it does not do so for purposes of advertising. This was an issue with the consumer version of Gmail—as Microsoft pointed out in its Gmail Man ads—but the firm no longer does so any more. This policy changed back in 2017.

So … you should be OK on that front. (And especially so in Europe, where privacy laws seem to be a lot more stringent.)

Microsoft advertising

AliMaggs asks:

What are your thoughts when it comes to Microsoft’s advertising strategy when it comes to consumers? I’m UK-based, so my experiences may differ. Other than Xbox (who, I believe, are quite independent with their marketing), I don’t think I’ve seen a television advert, or billboard advert, for any of Microsoft’s devices or consumer products in quite some time – perhaps the Windows 11 launch.

I don’t watch TV, so I’m sort of useless there, even for anecdotally noticing if there’s any Microsoft advertising. But I don’t see much Microsoft advertising in publications, on the web, or elsewhere either. I suspect the theory here is that they have billions of eyeballs on their own products, and so the best way to reach that audience is right there. Which explains the ads/suggestions in Windows, Office, Xbox, and elsewhere. (Soon, inside of games.)

I think the bigger advertising push isn’t so much about advertising their products and services but rather building out an advertising engine similar to what Google has. And that business has grown, and it has gotten at least one notable win, with Netflix. So there’s a business there that could amount to something.

But advertising its own consumer products? It may just be seen as throwing money away. With the exception of Xbox, most Microsoft users are probably in a position of having to use these products. And while they may choose a PC over a Mac or whatever for pragmatic reasons, there’s little reason to advertise these products. They kind of sell themselves.