Advertising moves the Internet and is very necessary, but in some cases its shoehorned incorporation is raising blisters. Today it is Microsoft that is being criticized because it has decided to introduce ads in a service that, until now, did not have them. And it is not exactly a little-used program.
Microsoft recently stepped on the accelerator when it comes to introducing a new version of Outlook that would absorb the service provided by both Mail and Calendar. Its availability is almost global, but there are still many users who have not received the updated version of the software. Those who do have it have found a not very pleasant surprise: advertising.
As in the web version
If you are one of those who have always used the web version of Outlook, what we are talking about will not surprise you much, given that Microsoft has been showing ads in this edition for some time. But normally, downloading the official Windows company program guaranteed to have that kind of smooth and non-invasive experience that all users like.
However, now the ads appear as standard and they are not exactly pleasant. There are two kinds. On the one hand, those that can appear in the side column, where their position makes them very identifiable and do not pose any problem. On the other hand, ads that are camouflaged as if they were emails that you have received and have not yet read. And that’s exactly where the problem lies, since Microsoft plays too distractingly with this type of advertising. This is something you can see in the screenshot in the previous paragraph, where the ad that is advertising is marked in red (of course, that red color is not in the program).
If you don’t want advertising… pay
Microsoft puts its cards on the table as has been seen in other cases lately and tells users that those looking for an ad-free experience just have to pay. If you click on the button that appears guiding you to enjoy without advertising, what happens is that we end up on the company’s website discovering the price that we are going to have to pay.
In total, we have to make a monthly payment of 2 euros or 20 euros per year. We do it in exchange for getting the Microsoft 365 Basic subscription, which provides us with other advantages. Logically, the higher priced subscriptions offered by the entity also include the absence of advertisements.
While it is true that it is not something new that Microsoft puts advertising in its tools or that we find email clients that include them, the dissatisfaction with the presence of ads in the inbox could not be higher. Some of the company’s main rivals have not yet resorted to this maneuver, which, by all accounts, they know perfectly well is not very ethical. On their website, the creators of Windows include text reaffirming that the ads are well marked so that they can be distinguished from real emails. But it is obvious that so much clarification has a reason: they are not as easy to differentiate as they might wish.
In this other screenshot that you can see, although the ads have been placed in the “Other” folder, it is obvious that their presence, if there were more emails among them, would be confusing. This can lead to clicking by mistake and loading the specific page to which the ad refers. As you can imagine, they are ads linked to external pages and not messages that are opened as if they were emails. Aside from this, what should be applauded is that there is a trash icon next to it so you can delete them easily. The bad news is that it won’t take long until you see different ads again. So, in the end, deleting them is not very productive.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, it is possible that there are a large number of users who do not want to jump through the hoops and end up looking for alternatives. In any case, Outlook has not reached the levels of effectiveness and performance it boasted in the past for a long time, so perhaps the time has come for a change.
