This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Of course they have. MS are putting ads everywhere in Windows. The revenue potential is huge and they have more than enough private information on everyone to do targeted ads.
Microsoft would be insane not to go down this route. It's inevitable.
We need more devices for sale that don't use Windows, because this won't stop. Microsoft is a publicly traded company and their stakeholders demand infinite growth.
The only way to get away from this is to use some kind of FOSS operating system
The Grand Nagus advocating for free and open source software... there must be a novel rule of acquisition I have not heard about yet!
Rule of acquisition number 1,337: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Sounds pretty on-brand for Rom
It's in the revised "wormhole aliens" edition .
Rule 69420: You shall sell the product, not be it.
Someone there wants to go back to 20+ years ago when your friends mom's Internet Explorer windows included 75 different toolbars and there was only a little bit of browser space left. The hayday of "Buddy Bar" is returning for your Edge, Outlook, and Taskbar. Next will be explorer and Excel. The future is looking bright.
Also, Bonzai Buddy.
Man, I had a girlfriend once like 20 years ago who’s dad knew I was into computers and he was so proud to show me this neat Banzai Buddy software he found, he thought he was so cool.
That was the moment that I realized that, actually, something was wrong with all the adults on this planet.
the little purple desktop buddy could come back now.. powered by ai
The only way to get away from this is to use some kind of FOSS operating system
Been doing this for like 10 years now. It was easy to see the future of windows when windows 8 and 10 started sending user data to their cloud. Next step is always serving ads.
And people pay for Windows too. :)
It's not too late to switch to Linux but you are very late if you haven't done it.
The bane of the public company. Once you get big enough that you're no longer able to sustain 20% yoy growth your investors will force you to leave no stone unturned.
They've already put in telemetry
Next they'll put in ads
Then they'll sell subscriptions to get rid of the ads
Then the subscription will become the minimum viable product
Then they'll put ads back in
Thunderbird is a great alternative to Outlook.
And when they figure out how to serve ads on IMAP, you can take thunderbird to another provider.
I don't think it'll actually come to that, due to popularity, but I can see them blocking IMAP access on new accounts due to 'security'.
Exchange was always the EEE to standard mail/calendar protocols. They have a path towards that.
They’ve already moved Active Directory to the cloud, they’re normalizing “Microsoft owns your accounts, even business ones”. All the content on Teams lives on Azure, and I believe SharePoint is doing the same.
Microsoft is EEEing the Fortune 500.
As is Mailspring
Email spam is already bad enough I don't need that shit built in
Hi @[email protected], we are sorry to hear you are not satisfied with our ad service. We always strive to bring you the best user experience on the web and in your Windows Operating System. We want to offer you a 10% discount on your next purchase for a 24 month Office365-VPN Home Suite: [STAYSAVE10]. We hope you like us more now. Thank you for reading this ad.
A couple of weeks ago I tried Outlook 365 when Windows Mail made me mad for the 1000th time because it has issues to actually send the E-Mails from one of my accounts…
Anyway, outlook started and of course just added my Microsoft Account ignoring all other accounts that could’ve been imported from Windows mail. There was a new mail so I clicked it. Although Firefox is my default browser, edge opened and there was a website. It took me multiple seconds to realize that Microsoft just baited me to click an ad and earn a couple of cents.
I got so angry that I installed thunderbird. If I compare it with older releases from a couple of years ago it did get a whole lot better. I’m very happy.
Windows gave me so many reasons in the last months that I also ditched it completely. Running Linux Mint now and just like thunderbird it is so much more refined if I compare it with the past…
Paying money for crappy subscription based software like office (need it for work) and still getting ads was definitely the no 1 reason to switch.
Nice, now you have to pay for giving your data to Microsoft, lol. Who would do that?!
Just a few hundred million people, I guess.
One must consider all who use outlook for business, there is no ads and I believe the say even no tracking. 🤷🏻♀️ so yea, I use outlook as well, but not because I want and not with ducking ads.
Just to clarify: there’s Outlook (M365) which is just the old Outlook, both as an app and webapp. Then there’s New Outlook, which looks like old Outlook but is a different, incomplete and hot garbage replacement for Windows Mail, Calender etc. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/new-outlook-vs-outlook-in-microsoft-365/e367b524-b637-49ac-8405-3d801af343c1
Well the "old" outlook included in M365 has now the option to „try new outlook“ which I activated. It looks like the Outlook in the screenshot (and like the web version of outlook) How many versions of outlook are there now?! 🤣
It actually is the web version, iirc
No one is paying for it. It's a free app.
This isn't Outlook from the paid Office suit. This is the shitty free "Mail" app that has been renamed to also be called Outlook because Microsoft sucks at naming things.
You pay for Windows.
Vermont can outlaw billboards across the state, but when it comes to everything digital, it seems like nothing's safe. We cannot even check out email on a dedicated email client application without being subjected to ads, both in the form of spam emails, marketing lists, and now even ads from the program itself.
IMO the government should be stepping in to regulate where ads can be placed, just like Vermont did with billboards.
So protonmail is pretty cool.
Made the switch last year from Gmail and I love it. I set up a custom domain and a catch all address as well, so I can give out [email protected] as an email and it gets to me. Particularly nice for finding out who's sharing my information, as well as picking out phishing emails. Banking coming in from [email protected]? Immediate red flag.
I do not understand why anyone would use Outlook when thunderbird is free and, in my experience, much more functional.
Prior to this new version of Outlook, Outlook was much more functional than Thunderbird and it wasn’t close. That being said while a year ago I’d say you were smoking dope, as of right now you are correct, new Outlook sucks.
Yeah this was an immediate no from me on my home PC that I run windows on so I went and downloaded Thunderbird and have been happy ever since.
Why was that the red line for you, given all the other shit that's already in Windows?
The article only seems to mention free consumer accounts, if I didn't accidentally skip a section. Does anyone know how this will affect M365 subscribers (both consumer/enterprise)? I use Outlook every day at work and the lack of features in the web app make it basically unusable for me.
This is basically "dog bites man" territory at this point.
This was always the case in the web version of Outlook, and the mobile client. If you subscribe to 365, ads are removed.
I noticed this last year when I moved away from 365 and started getting ads on the Outlook mobile client. I ended up binning it off and just used the default Mail app on iOS, which is a shame because the Outlook app on phones is actually superb. Not good enough to put up with ads though.
At least running Pihole eliminates these ads, same for the Android outlook app.
The constant shitty changes that I have to combat are enough to make me explore other options, however. I don't want to have to fight against the software I use.
I'll give Thunderbird another go (used it years past and bounced off), and failing that maybe I'll pick emClient back up (used to use it for managing multiple Google work accounts).
My difficulty is that I use a Microsoft hosted email, and integration with third party applications for contacts & calendar has always been an issue. Maybe it's time to move those to my Nextcloud instance?
After a while after you switch to Linux, the Microsoft headlines start getting funny instead of infuriating. 😂
