Microsoft To Add Ads To Smart Search 169
Vanderhoth writes "Today, Microsoft said its advertisers will be able to target users not just on Web search results pages but directly inside Windows Smart Search. David Pann, general manager of Microsoft's Search Advertising Group, said in an interview that advertisers don't have to do additional setup to participate. The Smart Search ads will feature a preview of the websites the ad will send people to, as well as click-to-call info and site links, which are additional links under the main result that direct users deeper into a website to the most likely page they might want."
Ads added post-purchase? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any time ads are added to a purchased program or device post-purchase, you can expect a big backlash.
Re:As if Windows8 wasn't having enough problems (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think that was not the idea all along?
Have you seen Xbox home?
dont get scroogled (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
If your local search had a button to "also search online" after local results were found and that online search returned ads, that'd be one thing -- its just another interface to an internet search engine and we pretty much expect ads.
But to automaticlly push local search online is bad enough, to return ads with that is just demented.
Nobody wants this. Absolutely Nobody.
Re:Windows Free vs Pro (Score:4, Insightful)
I could understand this if Windows was a free product with an ad-free pro upgrade but for a full product this is inexcusable
Even better, it's a feature that the high-willingness-to-pay corporate market will fucking loath(Oh, sure, we don't mind if our strategy leaks to who-knows-who every time somebody searches for an email...), it's a feature that will just help them look trashy and cheap compared to Apple(who already excels at making their competitors look trashy and cheap), and it is closest to the featureset of a more mature product that Google gives away for free with ads(and Microsoft wants you to pay for).
Should be a big win all around! Then again, though, they've mostly gotten away with it on XBL, so it could be just that bad out there.
Re:As if Windows8 wasn't having enough problems (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you nailed it. "Welp, we expected a huge backlash for running ads on our paid service that Sony gives away for free... but somehow we got away with it! Let's do the bait and switch with our desktop market and see how well it works there"
Apparently they didn't consider that what the gaming demographic is willing to put up with, serious businesses might not be. Gamers don't have to worry about HIPAA, PCI, SOX, or other privacy/security requirements.
There's got to be some group policy setting to disable this 'smart search' and its corresponding ads, and have the search tool conduct local searches only. (Group policy editing is available only in Pro, but you can generally get the same results on the Home version by manually setting a corresponding registry key.) Even this management team at Microsoft couldn't be dumb enough to not realize that businesses need an opt-out. Could they?
Re:Douchebags! (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between MS and Ubuntu here is that:
1) MS expects me to pay money for a license and then pay again by being subject to ads, and
2) Ubuntu gives me the OS for free, and lets me turn off the ads (or, even better, just install Kubuntu, which doesn't have the ads and works better.)