Microsoft: If You Are Going to Put Ads in Windows 10, Be Smart About it (Premium)

At this point in the Windows 10 lifecycle, seeing an advertisement in Windows 10 has become commonplace. While I still believe that Microsoft should not be shoving games and other random apps/junk down our throats, I wouldn't be as annoyed when they advertise their own apps/services if they did it intelligently.

This morning, when logging on to my machine after a having been off for the fourth of July, I was presented with a pop-up notification on the taskbar telling me how Edge on my mobile device can sync passwords, favorites and other content to my phone.

Advertisement annoyance aside, the bigger issue here is that I am already using Edge on my phone. In fact, I use it almost daily as I have replaced Safari with it as I think it has a better UI for handling multiple tabs (better than Chrome's too). Further, I am logged into the Edge browser on my phone with the same Microsoft account as my PC.

So why am I seeing a popup from the taskbar telling me about Edge on my phone when Microsoft already knows that I use the device on my iPhone?

For all of the preaching that Microsoft does about having the best AI in the world and that they are machine learning experts, why can't they put together the simple fact that I am already using their product on a mobile device and not show me an annoying ad for something I am already using? If Microsoft is going to keep shoving more intrusive ads in our face, they need to get smarter about how they do this.

And yes, I know that I can turn these notifications off but when I write about Microsoft for a career, I need to experience what the majority of users see so that I can better understand how Microsoft is evolving its operating system.

Both Paul and I have been writing about ads in Windows 10 for years and the slippery slope continues. I know that Microsoft will never remove them from the OS but I do hope that they get smarter about how they deliver them going forward because if they don't, they will only annoy their loyal customers even further.

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