With Microsoft ending the Windows 10 free upgrade offer, many of us believed that this was actually a good step, possibly ridding us of all the nagging self-promotional pop ups that the company put us through. Clearly, we were wrong. The Redmond software giant appears to have learned nothing from the negative user feedback that these constant pop ups provoked earlier in the year. Now, with over 40 million users leaving the company's browsers in just last month, the company is back to its old tactics.
Microsoft is luring people to its Edge browser with freebies
Back in August, Windows 10 users saw pop up messages in the taskbar advertising Microsoft's Edge browser. This happened when they were using a rival browser like Google's Chrome or Mozilla's Firefox. The company would suggest that Edge is faster and drains the battery slower than the other two. This actually initiated a sort of battle with Google that started actively publishing its own ads and blog posts promoting the changes that it's introducing to "Chrome on Windows" to make it faster.
Remember when I spoke about the anti-@googlechrome pop up? It's come back, here is a screenshot! #windows10 pic.twitter.com/FpOjL27srK
— Rudy Huyn (@RudyHuyn) July 18, 2016
Microsoft is back with these annoying campaigns, now reminding users to sign up for Microsoft Rewards (aka Bing Rewards) by using Microsoft Edge. The company continues its failing journey to get more users to its browser by using the same tricks that have proven to antagonize users in the past.
This time, however, it doesn't make any attacks against the other browsers, but simply lures the users in by enticing them with freebies. "Wanna earn while you browse? Get free movies and games with Microsoft Edge. See how," reads the ads that pop out from the Microsoft Edge icon in the taskbar.
The report first came from PCWorld, reporting that all the ad settings were turned off. Apparently, the Anniversary Update installation had reset them to default. While the company is trying to promote the new features, the attempts it makes often cross the line to be intrusive and highly annoying to users.
To put these aggressive promotions in some perspective, the software maker has lost over 300 million Edge and Internet Explorer users since January. That's a huge number of users who have chosen Chrome, Firefox and other rival browsers over Microsoft's offering.
