Just this week, I discovered that even after installing Python from the official website, if you happen to run a script that executes "python3" instead of "python", you'll instead trigger an unhelpful link to the Microsoft Store suggesting to install python from there.

Yes, the command line itself has ads for the store sprinkled throughout it.

Later, when I needed to pull down the Rust compiler, I discovered that the C++ redistributable package, despite not including Visual Studio, helpfully adds an explorer shell link to "Open in Visual Studio" which I suspect is meant to open the Store again, though on my system it appears to do nothing. So that's another ad.

Clearly I'm not the target audience for this kind of stuff, being a Linux administrator and using that as my daily driver, but there's still something inherently creepy about all of this. I don't trust marketers, or the advertising industry at large, and while I understand Microsoft is a business and is necessarily going to engage in some marketing, there's a time and a place. Basic features of my operating system are not it.