The revenue Microsoft loses by selling the OS cheap is more than made up by the fact that Bing search is tightly coupled with the product (although it is in theory possible to loosen that coupling after purchase, very few bother to do so). The result is a predictable large increase in the amount of user information that is gathered by Bing and sent back to Redmond for marketing purposes.
As with everything else these days, especially with folks like Google, Facebook, and so forth, it's all about selling your eyeballs to the highest bidder.
But in this situation, it also means that Windows 10 has a much expanded potential user base, which can help Microsoft meet its goal of a billion devices running Windows 10 in only a few years.
I’m interested in W10 for my teen daughter’s first computer/tablet. Will this Bing thing affect alternate browsers, too?
This is a good idea... if it was not possible to still use Google and to even set Google as default then I would say it was a bit unethical.
Bing is getting to be a pretty decent search engine.
Of course, IMO, Linux is a better choice of OS but I’m realistic enough to know it’s never going to get a big share of the market. I’m just glad Linux has a large enough base to keep going.
Windows 10 says that it won’t work well with my laptop graphics (Mobile Intel® HD graphics with shared graphics memory), is that something that might change, or is that a permanent problem.
My laptop came with 8.1.
Good article and responding post.
Windows 10 won’t be on anything I own.
They’d do better if the changed “Bing” to “Bling”.