> How do normal people (who use Windows) think that this is ok?

I have several hypotheses:

- Some people don't even think about it. Many probably don't see there is a political aspect to browsers. What harm is there in suggesting something? It's not even clear that it is an ad, they are not going to buy Edge, it's free. What's more, they may only know one OS and take whatever they are provided with as is without any critical look. They probably trust their computer (yeah, and this is scary, but since the system shows this ad, some will probably take it as good advice to follow, and Microsoft is very wrong doing this because they know it).

- Some are accustomed to ads. Some may even ignore them without knowing. Some people probably notice but don't care. By the way, why shouldn't a computer display ads in its UI if you are not against the idea of ads? (I personnally hate ads)

- Some probably think it's not okay, but possibly forget about it and get on with their lives anyway, and/or don't tell anybody about it, so we would not even know whether people think it is ok.

I will go out on a limb and say “normal people” do not consider this an advertisement. The ad itself is a basically an icon, just like all the pre-bundled icons for Office, that are presented as an option to use, and in this case the thing doesn’t even cost money. Despite the emphasis and importance some people (and most of HN reader fall here) place on privacy, the general desktop user base does not care. As a closing anecdote, my office just upgraded everyone to Windows 10. My boss was still using Internet Explorer as his browser of choice. He was furious that he now couldn’t use his Hotmail menu bar and auto connect to his aol.com email by default anymore. He doesn’t have a clue or care about which browser he’s using, he just wants his things the way he likes. Privacy is not even a passing concern. He’s now on Edge.

I would also like to add that "normal people" don't even realize they paid for Windows since it came pre-installed on their computer.

- Linux isn't very user friendly to begin with, whether it's in the form of OS usage or apps that you're used to. - A lot of people, including myself, grew up with Windows. Switching right now, after tens of years of usage, seems unnecessary still. - WARNING, personal opinion: Windows is the only platform for gamers.

Yeah, only reason I'm staying with Windows for the foreseeable future is because of the much superior app and games support compared to other platforms. Would have no problem going for Linux if it supported all my apps, steam catalog etc. I know things been improving in this area. For games, what must happen is the advent of a full cross platform graphics abstraction. WebGPU is a promising one. Vulkan too. But it's a very hard problem.

I disagree that Windows is the only platform for gamers. Obviously wine isn’t perfect yet, and getting banned from online games can certainly be a problem, but it’s gotten to the point I can say that Linux is viable alternative. The compromises you have to make are incredibly reasonable compared to what they used to be.

If you are used to ads everywhere now, why would you be surprised to see them in Windows? I mean for a "normal" person the argument against would probably make sense, but it probably won't jump in front of their eyes as a jarring thing

My gripe is the following; How did we get to the point where people have to say (from the article) “I need Chrome for work” The more I read this the more we, as developers should start steering towards true open source solutions.

> In what universe is that possibly ok - to put ads in a paid-for OS?

People have been accepting ads in paid products/services for generations. Cable TV channels have always had them, as have newspapers/magazines. Most movie theater chains run their own ads these days (not just trailers).

It's easy to see why Microsoft is dipping their toes into this - sadly, consumers don't seem to mind so much

Normal people buy Cable. Paid+ads is a valid business model used by many firms. It doesn't surprise me at all that _consumers_ are willing to purchase an OS product with ads - it does surprise me that no ad-free version is available for enterprises at additional cost.

"normal" users somehow end up with dozens of toolbars and adware and related crap anyway, which they don't mind at all, so MS taking another piece of that pie doesn't really look anything out of the ordinary to them.

Isn't windows free now?

Not really, I have a stationery that is pretty much an expensive gaming console, and I paid around $115 to get a Windows version on it. So it’s really sort of disgusting when it pre-installs various free-to-play installers or uses the start search menu for advertisements.

Hell, after years of having used *nix as my primary OS on my personal development laptop, I switched it to a surface pro 6 last year. I’m fairly certain these things is going to push me back to a Linux laptop.

I think pretty much. If you have a PC that has ever have any form of activated windows on it in the past it should activate a windows 10 install. So this would prob only exclude people building on new hardware which are considered oem anyway.

Clearly you're right. 2020 for me is the year of Linux on the laptop.