The Ad-Supported Operating System - This Post - External Link

Advertising is a very interesting thing. Whether you like it or not (probably not) it is a force to be reckoned with and has formed the backbone of today's media. While it can be annoying, advertising is the foundation of today's free content media, something which includes much of the internet.

One of the more interesting aspects of advertising is how it tends to pop up when we least expect it. For example, at a casual glance Google is a search company, but much of their profit is derived from their advertising business. While this is an obvious example, is not the only case of a powerful company running off of advertising revenue, despite the fact that this is not necessarily what they are known for.

Another example of this is Microsoft. This company makes most of its money off of software but has made it clear that they want a piece of the advertising game. It seems that some of their reasoning comes from a desire to compete with Google, just like their revamping of MSN Search not too long ago, but advertising offers a lot more than just a chance to take some money from Google.

Advertising is a very interesting thing. Whether you like it or not (probably not) it is a force to be reckoned with and has formed the backbone of today's media. While it can be annoying, advertising is the foundation of today's free content media, something which includes much of the internet.

One of the more interesting aspects of advertising is how it tends to pop up when we least expect it. For example, at a casual glance Google is a search company, but much of their profit is derived from their advertising business. While this is an obvious example, is not the only case of a powerful company running off of advertising revenue, despite the fact that this is not necessarily what they are known for.

Another example of this is Microsoft. This company makes most of its money off of software but has made it clear that they want a piece of the advertising game. It seems that some of their reasoning comes from a desire to compete with Google, just like their revamping of MSN Search not too long ago, but advertising offers a lot more than just a chance to take some money from Google.

An interesting issue which comes up in this discussion is if Microsoft would be able to get the advertisements to make up for the company's loss of the licensing fees, which could be into the hundreds of dollars per computer. Though, amortized over the life of each sytem, Microsoft would only have to bring in a few cents a day from each version of Windows.

It would be a constant effort to get advertisers and keep them happy because each would want to see performance in addition to penetration. Any advertisement which comes up during use of the OS would most likely be ignored, especially because Microsoft would hopefully not resort to something as annoying as pop-ups. The advertisements would probably take place in the periphery, such as on a Vista-style sidebar or a banner in the header and side toolbar areas of Explorer. These would inevitably lead to extremely low click-through rates and more than a few unhappy advertisers. That said, the penetration of this advertising along with its impact would be tremendous so there is little doubt that advertisers would be lining up to give it a try.

A major hurdle is the very real possibility of a hack which either prevents the advertisements or blocks them altogether. Any OS which resides on a local computer is going to be subject, at least to some extent, to the administrator so the chance of a hack is extremely good, almost certain if hackers are given enough time. This is no doubt why there was news about MSFT buying a adware company, probably so the operating system could essentially be infected with the most permanent adware possible, though at this point the term "adware" would not really be appropriate.

It seems that this sort of advertising would most likely be implemented through some sort of web-based operating system, where users only have so much control over the backend files but can still do what they need to do. Windows Live seems like it is the harbinger of something along these lines. The possibility of a web-based operating system is really not that far off, and using some sort of ramped up Active X or a rootkit to interact with local files this could be the future of the ad-supported operating system.

The possibility of an ad-supported Windows will of course lead people to consider the existence of an ad-supported Linux distribution. While this is a fun thought to entertain it seems like it would be extremely unlikely due to the number of free versions of Linux available. It is not impossible that a commercial version, like Linspire, would consider this, but with so many great free versions available it seems unlikely that this would ever get off the ground. It is more probable that certain applications or special services may become ad-supported, but due to the nature of open source, the feasibility of even this is quite limited.

The next logical question is, how will a free version of Windows affect desktop Linux? This is hard to speculate on, but at this time it would seem that the effect would be limited. The potential users of an ad-supported Windows would most likely be using Windows under any circumstances so this would just be a way to save some money. To people who are moving to Linux the cost of the OS is normally only a secondary reason, they tend to be fed up with Windows' problems and tired of paying for software. So it really does not seem like the desktop Linux community will have any problem dealing with a free version of Windows, though in certain cases, such as Linspire, there might be some cause for concern.

While ad-supported software is something which is here to stay, it is not clear when and how it will be put to use in an operating system. Microsoft is positioning itself to be able to put out an ad-supported operating system but it looks like it will be some time before this idea is a reality.