Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

In return, I judge people who use technology choice as an indication of skill as inexperienced. At one point, I was like that too. I was all about tweaking and customizing Linux; getting it to run just so on hardware that, in some cases, was actively hostile to it (I still haven't entirely forgiven Broadcom). Moreover, at that time I was time-rich and cash-poor, so it made sense for me to spend extra time in order to gain open-source versions of closed-source tools that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

But, at some point, I realized that I wasn't really getting anything out of it. Watching stuff fly by on the command line, and tweaking config files by hand makes you feel like a 1337 h4x0r the first time you do it. But after you've had to tweak config files to get your wifi working for the twelfth time, after you've had to apologize to your collaborators because you can't edit their documents, after you've wasted people's time because your laptop can't connect to a projector, you realize that the real determinant of success isn't whether you're using Windows or Linux. It isn't whether you've memorized man pages or obscure command line flags. It isn't whether you can rattle off the contents of your xorg.conf and smb.conf by heart. It's whether you get stuff done. All the rest of it is just means to that end. And I realized that Linux, on the client, was more of an impediment to getting stuff done than a help.

I still use Linux. I have a half-dozen or so Linux VMs running on this machine right now for various projects. The fact still remains that new programming languages and server technologies come to Linux first, OSX second and Windows much later. But in terms of desktop/laptop experience? Linux still requires far too much tweaking and configuration, and I find it much easier to get stuff done with Linux on the server and Windows on the client.

Once per device. Consumers (with a few exceptions, of course) don't, in the standard sense, really "buy" Windows. They pay for it, sure, when they buy a new computer, phone, etc., but most consumers don't buy a shrink-wrapped copy of Windows 10 off the shelf. Microsoft is still making money off of Windows with every purchase of a new desktop or laptop.

I'll grant that they may have lost some revenue by "giving away" Windows 10 upgrades and such but it doesn't seem to be affecting them too much. From a quick glance, it looks like $MSFT is currently at an all-time high.

> ... having to toggle off advertising is not going to keep me from using [Windows] ...

Out of curiosity, where will you draw the line?

Will you change your mind when they remove the option to turn the OneDrive ads off? What about when the ads change -- from OneDrive ads to ads for other Microsoft products? Or ads for other, unrelated, third-party products?

What about when the ads expand to other parts of the "Windows experience"? Right now, according to TFA, they're only shown in Windows Explorer. Will you change your mind when Microsoft starts injecting ads into other applications you use on a daily basis? What if they begin showing video advertisements before you can watch a home video of your kids in (the modern equivalent of) Windows Media Player? Or when a slideshow of your family vacation photos is interrupted by an advertisement being shown every tenth photo?

It sounds absurd, I know, and these scenarios are a long way off from what's happening now -- showing OneDrive ads in Windows Explorer -- and I wouldn't really expect any of the above to ever actually happen. Then again, as recently as a couple years ago, we wouldn't have expected our operating system to ever show us any ads at all.

If we had been asked a few years ago, most of us (in "the tech community") wouldn't have ever expected that Microsoft would someday implement the privacy-invading tracking features ("telemetry") that now exist in Windows 10. It would have seemed absolutely crazy that they'd do something like that -- but they did. If memory serves, it was -- at first -- relatively easy to disable. My understanding is, however, that they continued to implement more and more telemetry while at the same time making it even more difficult to completely turn off. Even today, I don't think there exists any way to reliably -- and with 100% certainty -- prevent a Windows 10 PC from sending any "telemetry" back to the mothership.

If these ads make Microsoft money -- and I have no doubt that they will -- why wouldn't they expand on this idea and squeeze in more ads anywhere they can? We've already seen that customers will not move away from Windows as their desktop operating system (in any significant number) when Microsoft implements these new "features", so what do they have to lose?

Rest assured that these ads will not be going away. To the contrary, they will almost certainly continue to exist and become even more widespread. We will, someday, reach a point where the average Windows desktop resembles a NASCAR race car -- covered with logos and advertisements -- and wonder "how did we get to this point?".

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Myself, the line that I drew was crossed by Microsoft many, many years ago. Looking back, I'm glad that it happened when it did. It saved me from dealing with a decade's worth of Microsoft's bullshit.