Your Start menu now sells you products you already own
Windows 11 shell progressively added Microsoft product promotions
The market's verdict: +2.1% on MSFT in the week after.
Status: Stood by it. Working as intendedâ„¢
What actually happened
Between 2023 and 2025, Windows 11 slowly filled up with ads. Promotions for Edge, OneDrive, Microsoft 365 and Bing turned up in the Start menu, Search, File Explorer, the lock screen and Settings. Each one arrived as "a helpful suggestion." Put together, the operating system now works like a mall directory that occasionally also runs your programs.
This one is reported.
They did it more than once
Before that:
Windows itself started begging you to use Bing
(Mar 2024)
The ads followed you out of the Start menu and into the browser.
Links
Timeline
- Jun 1, 2024 Stood by it Microsoft stood by it.