Nowadays Windows is filled with adware and is fairly slow, but it wasn’t always like this. Was there a particular time where a change occurred?

  • LeadersAtWork@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The literal entirety of the retail market across the planet has a concept called a “loss leader”. You take a monetary hit on Product A with the expectation that people will come in for that AND by virtue of the service being readily available, also buy Product B, C, D, etc. I imagine, if done with minimal intrusiveness, Microsoft could easily do the same with Windows.

    On paper as a concept it works. I’m not sure I’m savvy enough to understand the actual issues though.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They employ a lot of this strategy (the ads, the ‘subscribe to Microsoft 365 today’ ‘your computer is at risk to ransomware because you aren’t paying us for onedrive’). Except the “loss” part. In fact, I think it’s rare nowadays to find a “loss” leader, they seem to have settled around at worst “barely profitable” in business. Too many loss leaders had pretty terrible business outcomes, so it seems to be an unpopular thing to expose your business the risk of going negative margin at any significant scale. Like this disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener

      • LeadersAtWork@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I must be behind. I’ve been under the impression that pulling people in on a minor less meant greater margins. Perhaps COVID had a significant adverse impact on that as well.