Microsoft Confirms It Is Experimenting With Ads In the Windows 11 Taskbar

Microsoft has confirmed it is experimenting with "Recommendations" in the Windows 11 Taskbar, the company's latest thinly veiled attempt to serve ads in its OS....
Microsoft Confirms It Is Experimenting With Ads In the Windows 11 Taskbar
Written by Matt Milano

Microsoft has confirmed it is experimenting with “Recommendations” in the Windows 11 Taskbar, the company’s latest thinly veiled attempt to serve ads in its OS.

Microsoft leaker Albacore revealed a new button on the Windows 11 Taskbar, called “Recommendations.” There was little additional details at the time, but Microsoft has now confirmed its intentions. In a blog post, the company says the new feature will make recommendations from the Microsoft Store.

Building on top of recent improvements like grouping recently installed apps and showing your frequently used apps, we are now trying out recommendations to help you discover great apps from the Microsoft Store under Recommended on the Start menu. This will appear only for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel in the U.S. and will not apply to commercial devices (devices managed by organizations).

Fortunately, Microsoft says the feature can be turned off.

This can be turned off by going to Settings > Personalization > Start and turning off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more”. As a reminder, we regularly try out new experiences and concepts that may never get released with Windows Insiders to get feedback. Should you see this experience on the Start menu, let us know what you think. We are beginning to roll this out to a small set of Insiders in the Beta Channel at first.

The company also emphasizes that not all features that it test in its Beta Channel will ship.

The Beta Channel is the place we preview experiences that are closer to what we will ship to our general customers. Because the Dev and Beta Channels represent parallel development paths from our engineers, there may be cases where features and experiences show up in the Beta Channel first. However, this does not mean every feature we try out in the Beta Channel will ship. We encourage Insiders to read this blog post that outlines the ways we’ll try things out with Insiders in both the Dev and Beta Channels.

That latest statement seems to be an acknowledgment that Microsoft knows Recommendations are likely to be unpopular. The fact is, users are quickly tiring of Microsoft’s insistence on trying to shove ads into Windows and monetize its users’ data.

Hopefully, the company rethinks this idea sooner rather than later.

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