Just when we thought there would be no more Microsoft ads for its services in Windows 11, the company found other possible spots.
The Redmond giant has started with the test of placing ads in the Settings menu of Windows 11 by promoting its services and benefits of Microsoft account. The ongoing “feature” testing is now active in preview builds for a few weeks and now it’s rolling out to more users for evaluation.
Luckily the testing is being done in the Canary build which is the most experimental version of Windows, so chances are that it may never come alive.
Albacore (@thebookisclosed) user posted several screenshots on his Twitter account showing the new ads placed in the Windows 11 Settings page that could be reserved for ads and general system notifications.
Updates were made to the Microsoft Account portion of the upcoming Settings Homepage, here's how it looks now + a preview of end of product support notices that can appear in the Account page pic.twitter.com/DwYEKqOb9n
— λlbacore 🥝 (@thebookisclosed) May 5, 2023
As seen in the screenshots, a settings page now shows an ad for a Microsoft 365 free trial. Other ads are related to the benefits of using Microsoft accounts.
Microsoft was already pushing its users into using Microsoft accounts on Windows 11, replacing local accounts, and now they went one step further by pushing Microsoft 365 accounts.
Additionally, the company announced that some links posted in Teams and Outlook would only open in the Edge browser, thus ignoring system default settings in favor of company products.
With this move, Microsoft obviously wants to leverage its huge Windows OS market share for selling more services to Windows 11 customers.