Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela admitted that the Windows 10 upgrade campaign, which bombarded users with invasive notifications and reminder screens to upgrade their operating system, went too far.
Microsoft’s release of Windows 10 saw the company attempt an upgrade rollout method not unlike Apple’s regular operating system updates which are offered for free through the Mac App Store. Microsoft’s upgrade program, however, was much more aggressive. At first a small notification would pop up on screen which could be dismissed by clicking a small X button in the upper right corner, but over time the button could become unresponsive, forcing users to upgrade.
One woman successfully sued Microsoft after the upgrade rendered her computer inoperative.
Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer, Chris Capossela, admitted in an interview on Windows Weekly that the company had “gone too far” when attempting to force users to upgrade.
“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,” admitted Capossela.
“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 behavior,” he continued. “And those two weeks were pretty painful and clearly a lowlight for us. We learned a lot from it obviously.”
Microsoft claims that as many as 400 million machines are running Windows 10 in 192 countries worldwide.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart Tech covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com