Microsoft Admits It Pushed Windows 10 On People Too Much

While most users haven’t had any particular quarrels with Windows 10, the same can’t be said for those on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 who refused to upgrade. As the clock inched closer to the deadline for a free Windows 10 upgrade earlier this year, Microsoft’s campaign to users became increasingly aggressive.

But in a parting gift and a reminder of the year that was, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer has finally admitted that maybe, possibly the company pushed Windows 10 on people a little too hard.

In an interview with the Windows Weekly podcast, chief marketing officer Chris Capossela revealed that one of his personal lowlights for 2016 was when Microsoft rolled out the infamous update for Windows 10 that didn’t cancel the update even when users tried to close the dialog box.

“We know we want people to be running Windows 10 from a security perspective, but finding the right balance where you’re not stepping over the line of being too aggressive is something we tried and for a lot of the year I think we got it right, but there was one particular moment in particular where, you know, the red X in the dialog box which typically means you cancel didn’t mean cancel,” Capossela said.

“And within a couple of hours of that hitting the world, with the listening systems we have we knew that we had gone too far and then, of course, it takes some time to roll out the update that changes that behaviour. And those two weeks were pretty painful and clearly a lowlight for us. We learned a lot from it obviously.”

I can imagine quite a few users would argue that several of Microsoft’s “Get Windows 10” notifications were going too far. Nonetheless, it’s at least nice to have some official acknowledgement that Redmond went too far.


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