Microsoft Can’t Stop Punching Windows 10 in the Face (Premium)

Windows 10 version 1809 is wonderfully free of the nonsense features that bogged down previous feature updates. And then there's this: When you try to install the web browser you prefer to use, it displays a brand new advertisement for Microsoft Edge.

Yes, Mehedi wrote about this earlier today. But here, I'd like to simply add my voice to what I assume is a majority of Windows users, fans, and enthusiasts who cannot fathom why Microsoft continues to undermine everything that is right and good about Windows. And that this terribleness is not only continuing over time, it's getting worse with each release.

Windows has had a lot of ups and downs over the years, of course. And it has had to fend off a diverse range of threats during this time, as well. In recent years, however, the old strategies started failing Microsoft. And for reasons that were partly beyond its control---the rise of mobile and web computing at a time when its hands were tied, so to speak, by antitrust punishments---Windows finally succumbed to outside pressures and the downward spiral began.

The fall of Windows was also partly caused by bad decisions on Microsoft's part: The rise of Steven Sinofsky, an insane person, and his dismantling of everything that made the platform great with Windows 8 being the central misstep. Windows 8 was an immeasurably good gift to Apple and Google, and the timing couldn't have been worse. And the impact is obvious: The PC market collapsed with the release of Windows 8, and it is now just two-thirds its former size and is still shrinking. (Despite a single quarter of "growth" recently.)

Windows 8 was so bad that Microsoft swiftly removed Sinofsky and then worked to get rid of the CEO who put him in that position in the first place. And its successor, Windows 10, was conceived and launched by a new team, under a new leader, under a new CEO. The new Microsoft.

And Windows 10---after a few apologies in the form of Windows 8.x updates---quickly corrected the mistakes of Windows 8, reversing its craziest changes and returning the product, rightfully, to a more PC-centric design. I lauded this change, and this rejection of insanity is still the high point of the whole transition to Windows 10.

But the damage was done. As a result, that new Microsoft hasn't been so kind to Windows 10: Terry Myerson, the Windows chief who succeeded Sinofsky, was forced to make Windows 10 fit within the company's new direction as a cloud computing super-power. And that means a number of things, including aligning Windows 10 with the support life cycle of Microsoft's cloud offerings. And making it make sense in its new and diminished role.

On that note, Windows 10 has only accelerated some bad behavior that started in Windows 10: The rampant and egregious placement of advertisements throughout the system. What I called, years ago, the slippery slope.

And I've never been more right in my life about something: The advertising that appears in ...