The migration from the classic Mail and Calendar app to the new Outlook app is in full swing already. Microsoft announced the deprecation of the classic apps in favor of a new Outlook app in June 2023. It introduced the new Outlook app to Insider builds a month later and announced that it would enforce the migration in early 2024.
Not all users are migrated at this point. Those who have been migrated already or installed the Outlook app directly, may notice several differences between the new Outlook app and the classic Mail app.
One of the main differences turns an ad-free email experience into one with ads. You may see ads in the inbox in the new Outlook.
↫ Martin Brinkmann
Ads disguised as emails in your inbox. Microsoft will not rest until Windows resembles Times Square. What a trash fire of an operating system.
Microsoft has a new slogan: you are not the customer, you are the product.
🙁
Not surprising, but somewhat scary when you consider how many home users are going to be using this.
The New Outlook stores all your mail on Microsoft’s servers, whether it’s a microsoft hosted email or not. If you configure your gmail or yahoo mail or ISP email with the New Outlook, Microsoft sucks all your mail down to their servers and then can use that data for whatever analytics or data harvesting it wants, across many times more mailboxes than they ever had access to before, including the ones that previously decided not to go with Microsoft.
The old Mail app, and classic Outlook, store all that locally, so your mail is only visible to Microsoft if you choose to let them host it.
I suspect things will get a lot worse along this road.
The business model is clear: free Os and free Apps -> filled with Ad’s. Paid services -> no Ads (at least, most of the time).
As much as I hate ads sneaked everywhere, free software does not pay the developer’s salary.
We used to pay for windows but since windows 10 it is supposedly “free”; assuming MIcrosoft still pays their developer each month, that money must come from somewhere and the paid Office 365 subscription cannot cover every cost.
Exactly this. No such thing as free (beer). Even if you choose to use thunderbird, Mozilla is ultimately funded by ad revenue of its search defaults.
enryfox,
Windows isn’t free. Whether it’s itemized or not, consumers are paying real money for windows. The business model is more akin to cable tv where consumers end up paying AND watching ads.
Alfman,
I have an old laptop which shipped with Windows 7; while Windows 7 itself was not a free upgrade from Vista (it costed quite some money) I got the free upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft is letting me use legally their OS but i have not spent a cent on it. And the OEM license you get with a new 400 EUR laptop surely costs a lot less then the purchase of a proper windows license several years ago. But the cost of developing software in 2024 surely has not gone down compared to 2010, something must cover the cost that the new licensing fee’s do not cover.
The industry trends in the PC world were such that Microsoft were facing customers increasingly loosing interest in upgrading windows and an increasing share of microsoft’s customers were sticking with older operating systems. Microsoft’s new operating systems were struggling to compete with their own older operating systems and this came to a head with windows 8. Microsoft knew they had lost the ability to charge for upgrades, so with windows 10 microsoft decided to try a new strategy that sacrificed a relatively low number of would-be sales for increasing relevancy of new versions of windows. They removed the payment barriers to windows 10 upgrades and did everything possible to coerce every last windows 7 user into installing windows 10, even tricking consumers into it.
Windows 10 came with more ads, more tracking, microsoft accounts, etc, but microsoft are still charging for windows and don’t want customers to get away with free upgrades forever, so they instituted some rather arbitrary CPU requirements for windows 11 and obviously discontinuing windows 10. This could generate a quarter of a billion new windows OEM sales in the coming years.
https://cybernews.com/tech/microsoft-windows-10-end-support-240-million-pcs-landfill-e-waste/
For better or worse, microsoft’s long term vision of windows is for it to be a paid commercial operating system with ads.
Pc sales are shrinking year after year; previous owner of laptops are simply giving up and using their phone or tablet instead as they fits all their needs. I do not think Microsoft business plan solely centres on OEM sales of windows license for new PC, it would be as if in 2005 your entire business would rely on DVD rental.
I have a handful of laptop’s which runs Windows 10 but are not upgradeable to windows 11: they are ~10 years old entry level laptop’s (originally shipped with win 7) which are struggling to get decent performances with current software (web browsing with Firefox is not exactly snappy). Though i would have liked to install windows 11, I understand why they were cut out of the upgrades.
Anyway, my main point still stands: given the cost of developing win 10 and win 11 have not shrunk compared to win 7, and given the minor income from premium paid upgrades and OEM licences, Microsoft must find somewhere else a source if income; and that means user profiling, ads, sneaky ads, paid extras …
I am not a big fan of such business model, but everybody (me included) likes to have their salary paid at the end of the months.
And if you do not like a product, just don’t buy it or use it. Windows is no longer mandatory and there are many office alternatives which satisfy the need of most users.
enryfox,
Nobody is saying it’s their sole business plan, but. the fact that they’re NOT making windows free and have devised a way to make users pay who would not have otherwise needed to says a lot about microsoft’s business intentions.
Microsoft didn’t only “cut” older useless models though. Hundreds of millions of systems are still very usable and demonstrably so if you bypass microsoft’s arbitrary policy enforcement. For better or worse microsoft have a strong financial incentive to lean towards planned obsolescence.
This moves the goalposts from what you originally said, which is fine, but the point as it was originally posted needed to be walked back. We as consumers and critics need to see the situation for what it actually is: paid windows licenses AND ads.
But in classic Microsoft style, this is a business model that suits them, not their customers. The majority of users were not asking for their OS to become free and ad-supported.
I can understand a scenario where some users want this, but certainly not people who have paid for a full Pro license. What’s Pro about this?
Well, for the Home license you also have to pay, so I don`t understand why it should be on worse position? Pro has more functions, it doesn`t make Home versions free.
Marshal Jim Raynor,
That’s my take as well. If microsoft want to make a “free as in beer” data harvesting & ad-supported version of windows along side paid versions, then do that. But microsoft’s current approach is a raw deal for paying customers who end up paying for products that include the anti-features anyway.
This is the logical progression.
The online version of Gmail and Outlook include Ads. And users fully accept it. So now your (free beer) local app does the same. You can still Buy Outlook and not get Ads.
The pay to remove ads model is fairly ubiquitous these days isn’t it?
I paid for Outlook Premium back before they cancelled it. But it seems MS never reintroduced ads to online outlook despite discontinued the product and I’ve long sin ce stopped paying.
Adurbe,
I was very surprised when I started seeing ads for other microsoft products on the corporation editions. The ads are infesting everything whether you pay for the software or not.
I don’t think this is a logical progression at all. Except for sales people who don’t understand the difference between a free user and a paying customer.
Online Outlook is a free online service so there’s little option to sustain the it, other than ad-supported.
A Windows mail app is not free. It’s built into an operating system which has been paid for. It’s offered as a tool, to compete with other operating systems.
Paradroid,
Ads are one thing for products that are truly free to consumers. But it’s rather egregious to have paid products & services being subjected to ads. I liken it to the cable-tv model, both very expensive and riddled with advertising.
Microsoft developers have been busy adding ads to existing commercial paid products.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-to-stop-ads-in-excel-info-bar/005b11e1-b72d-42e7-8fe2-cd5c75f459ae
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365/how-do-i-block-microsoft-yellow-info-bar-ads/m-p/370169
This is the future that they want…if we don’t collectively shun it, then this is the future that we will get.
“Windows mail app is not free.”
The new outlook is the ad-supported free version of their paid-for app included in their 365 offering (Outlook).
If you want to not have ads then you can pay and you don’t have them. If you don’t want to pay and/or don’t want ads you can continue to use Windows Mail.
So Microsoft are providing you with 3 options;
1. Free as part of the OS (Windows Mail)
2. Free and Ad Supported (“new” Outlook)
3. Paid (Outlook 365)
Now you Can argue that Microsoft are encouraging users to move from the OS version to the Ad supported one in quite an aggressive/nagging way. And that their branding is.. poor. But a user hasn’t “lost” anything and the ad supported version is opt-in.
Adurbe,
I’d argue that software that comes with the OS isn’t “free” any more than the radio that comes with your car is “free”. Rather than free we should call them included/bundled.
I don’t use outlook for email, so I can’t say whether it shows ads, however I think it was last year I personally started to see microsoft ads like the ones described here in other paid office applications…
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-is-showing-ads-for-microsoft-365-in-office-2021/
Microsoft are probing to see what they can get away with, as long as the response is apathetic, then we should expect more of it.
Windows Mail and Calendar was an operating system component, delivered as part of the operating system that is paid for (somewhere along the line, even if a free upgrade was applied).
New Outlook is a forced replacement for that operating system component. Microsoft is replacing the operating system component with a wrapper to their web based email product.
Users who already paid for their mail client, are being forced to transition to a “free” ad-riddled equivalent.
Ultimately, rollback options will be removed per the roadmap, however even now to roll back requires setting up the online version first, before you get the option to roll back.
So your option 1 isn’t “Free as part of the OS”, it’s “Paid for as part of the OS” – and that option is being actively taken away from people who are currently using it. The ad supported version is not opt-in.
The user is losing something, something they paid for.
“The online version of Gmail and Outlook include Ads.”
I use Gmail through Firefox using Ubuntu and I have never seen an ad.