File Explorer fiasco: Window to Microsoft's mixed-up motivations
- Reference: 1647855005
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/03/21/file_explorer_fiasco_column/
- Source link:
It is an open secret that Microsoft is increasingly keen on using Windows as an ad delivery platform, to the exasperation of users and the despair of all who have to manage the corporate computing environment.
Windows 10 is replete with lock screen ads, suggested apps in the Start menu, nagging taskbar pop-ups, notification nudges, and even a brief excursion into third party ads in its [2]Mail client .
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Now the company has taken a utility that's been at the heart of Windows since the first version and plastered it with advertisements. It's not unfair to assume that Microsoft has developed at least the technology and [4]potentially the appetite to open content pipelines anywhere it feels like doing so.
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As any cultural theorist will tell you, adverts contain a lot more than just the thing they're advertising. When, where and how they appear can tell you a great deal about the advertiser, how they see their market and what their real priorities are. There are two big messages in the File Manager farago, both revealing aspects of Microsoft's own internal thoughts and deeds that the company would rather not advertise at all.
When, where and how adverts appear can tell you a great deal about the advertiser, how they see their market and what their real priorities are
As with the third-party ads in Windows 10 Mail, once people noticed and started asking questions, Microsoft was quick to say it had no intention of actually doing the File Explorer advertising scheme. They both got out by mistake, you see, and any hint that they were part of an actual planned public experience is completely accidental.
Perhaps these things were internal tests only, but why would anyone think them worth spending development time on when the user pushback was always going to be so obvious? More importantly, what does it say about Microsoft's internal quality control that these things get out and nobody within the company even notices until Twittertime?
What else, not so obvious but just as troublesome, is in there that's escaping the Redmond containment field?
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This concern is multiplied by the second message wrapped up in these Madison Avenue mutant features: Microsoft counts their development and use as worth the extra security risk they inherently present.
It's not just that any extra complication to a system always has the potential to contain a vulnerability. Adverts deliver content, which itself presents a constantly changing threat profile.
We know from the web that [8]third-party adverts can contain a wide spectrum of attacks, from borderline legal links to straight-up driveby malware.
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That has been hard enough to manage in the browser environment: does anyone want to have to add various OS features to the list of things to worry about? In exchange for some brightly coloured plea to install Candy Crush while you're trying to juggle five logs, 10 search tabs and an IDE full of faulty code?
Most of the in-OS advertising has been for Microsoft's own services and products, which is less risky than the open web's potpourri of poisonous pop-ups. Yet if these advertising channels work, there'll be a huge push to use them as more direct sources of cash by offering placements to the usual barrage of "carefully selected third parties" on the basis of wallet size. There's no sign that anyone within Microsoft with any sort of control is setting limits on where the company will go with these, providing the prizes glitter enough.
[10]Teen bought Google ad for his scam website and made 48 Bitcoins duping UK online shoppers
[11]How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?
[12]Microsoft slides ads into Windows Insiders' File Explorer
[13]114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple's M1 Ultra wake-up call
Microsoft is putting revenue ahead of security, ahead of productivity, ahead of quality control. Are these the attributes of a reliable enterprise partner who's positioning themselves as the very heart of corporate computing? It won't be the first time the poor bloody ratings and officers in the enterprise engine room are left having to work around Microsoft's misguided business models.
There are rules in this game, and weakening the security and functionally of core components for adventures in advertising breaks a lot of them. Microsoft sees huge revenues from corporate licensing for Windows, and in exchange we're entitled to get a tool that's designed to do the job we need it to do. It's like paying a fortune for the world's finest spanner, only to find the handle shot through with punched-out pitches to buy Satya Nadella's nuts and bolts.
Enough's enough. Microsoft should take the effort it's putting into annoying us and weakening Windows into better QC, better UX and is better leaving us the hell alone to get on with our technology lives. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/15/file_explorer_ad/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/17/windows_10_mail_client_adverts/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yjha5eQzVYCUpaLHBsFrOgAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/17/file_explorer_windows_ads/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yjha5eQzVYCUpaLHBsFrOgAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yjha5eQzVYCUpaLHBsFrOgAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yjha5eQzVYCUpaLHBsFrOgAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/21/google_search_iframe/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yjha5eQzVYCUpaLHBsFrOgAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/27/uk_teen_google_ad_48_bitcoin_scam_website/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/17/file_explorer_windows_ads/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/15/file_explorer_ad/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/14/apple_m1_opinion_column/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Irritation and security flaws are an intentional feature
You are obviously a time traveller who has come back from 5 years in the future. Please tell us if the year of Linux on the desktop has arrived yet?!?
If you can't answer then I'll just assume you're being chased by him ------->
Re:Please tell us if the year of Linux
The OP didn't mention Linux at all so please get off your high horse...
What we saw is clearly Microturds vision of the future where Ads are part of the OS itself and not just a [[cough][cough] feature of an app such as a web browser.
I might be wrong but I get the feeling from previous comments on this that Ad in the file browser is well beyond the pale and is a mega step backwards.
IMHO, Operating Systems are there to facilitate the user to do stuff. Anything that gets in the way of that purpose is to be avoided at all costs. MS has been eating away at our ease of doing stuff for years. This is just the next small step.
I will not be going down that route. The IT industry as a whole needs to give a collective finger to MS. If it does not then... you see that slippery slope over there... lookout you might well be tumbling down it very soon.
If you want to go all in with MS's ambitions for subscriptions and more tracking and slurping of your every keystroke/mouse movement then please go ahead but there are a lot of us who will not be following you down that slippery slope.
Re: Irritation and security flaws are an intentional feature
"You are obviously a time traveller who has come back from 5 years in the future."
From my PoV, just somebody who can see the way Microsoft would like to take things. The only questions for the likes of yourself seem to be how much of it will you let happen and how quickly and you seem to have answered the second already.
Re: Irritation and security flaws are an intentional feature
You are mistaken. The personal computer is not for your convenience, but is purely a strategic source of revenue for microsoft. Any "productivity" you may experience is purely accidental and will be rectified in the next update.
Microsoft is putting revenue ahead of security, ahead of productivity, ahead of quality control...
And this is news? Where have you been in the last, oh, 30 years?
what does it say about Microsoft's internal quality control?
It says [1]this.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220225094943/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990329
Re: what does it say about Microsoft's internal quality control?
It says that they never moved on from "if it compiles we ship it".
Remember that when considering adopting Typescript.
-A.
"worth the extra security risk they inherently present"
Not Microsoft's risk - the security risk is entirely a user problem. I'm stating the obvious here, but if you count even just the critical vulnerabilities reported for any single version of Windows and note how little this deluge of hazards to users has actually affected either the MS bottom line or its domination of the OS space, it'll be obvious that they just don't care about anything much except the revenue stream - all the more now a high proportion of it is subscription-based so they can turn the screw more readily.
But I'm not specifically MS-bashing here. The idea that users' needs (including security) are now a high priority for software vendors generally is merely a myth. Like all businesses with captive markets, they're primarily interested in their balance sheets.
Re: "worth the extra security risk they inherently present"
"Like all businesses with captive markets, they're primarily interested in their balance sheets."
But is that market capture guaranteed? It consists largely of businesses that have their own bottom line to tend to. How much more intrusion into their affairs will it take for those customers to start to review the market? Anyone not firmly wedded to Windowsland knows very well that other desktop environments can be re-skinned to like more or less any version of Windows that takes your fancy. It's quite easy to envisage a PC vendor pre-installing Linux or BSD with a first run menu for a new user which offers a choice of any Windows UI from W2K to present.
In this context the spoiler of "It doesn't run my gamez" won't get far; this is a work machine. The other spoiler, the user with a massive investment in Excel macros, might end up finding themselves the corporate odd man out, just like the user who must have a Mac. There might even be a market in tools to convert those spreadsheets into one-off applications.
Accidental ads in File Explorer
No, no, not a company policy. Just yet another programmer we let loose. The poor kid had no clear idea what an OS is, and he wanted to please his boss. Now, if we comment out his code, we'll break his heart. But don't worry, he'll learn from his mistake.
Ads in the OS
Ouch. I'll stay with Apple then. Privacy is not my concern, but distractions definitely are.
Irritation and security flaws are an intentional feature
If you need to focus on your work and really do not want malware: pay an hourly fee for Microsoft Enterprise Premium Plus which comes with free reduced advertising for the first 45 minutes.