And now, the teams team wants to make it worse.
It still a little mindblowing to me that teams steals focus like it does at startup. Windows boots relatively slowly that I could be in an Outlook window or typing in a URL or whatever after a fresh reboot and then teams just steals my mouse and keyboard. I've trained myself to not do anything until teams starts (and being an electron app, it certainly takes its time) because I'm so annoyed by focus stealing.
On my home computer the xbox application does the same but at least it loads super fast. I am just bewildered that in 2021 that focus stealing like this is so common and accepted by anyone let alone Microsoft. It just feels like scammy 2000s adware.
Not sure why you’re using the Xbox app, but I believe it also has the option to open in background.
Curiously (and annoyingly) enough, when I type "update" in Windows search the top result is, invariably, "Microsoft Teams."
They do place links to third party games in the start menu upon installation. And they also inform about first party services where it makes sense (like OneDrive in Explorer, and Office365 when trying to edit a Word file). I wouldn't consider the first party offers an ad, if anything maybe an upsell, but that is just semantics.
The thing is, I haven't payed for Windows in close to a decade (legally!). Even at work, we get all the Windows and Office licenses from Microsoft Gold (for having a couple employees take some IoT certification and slapping their sticker on promotional material). One way microsoft makes money is with these "Ads".
If there is something that bothers me about Windows, it is the inconsistency. Visually, and quality wise. It seems MS is a totally heterogenous organisation with some brilliant teams that have a lot of freedom, and some less good teams that are heavily constrained. Some parts are really good (like the work on Windows Terminal, WSL, the new iteration of fluent design). But it seems nobody has the authority to push consistency across the system. There are longstanding bugs and sources of wierdness that are never addressed. Meanwhile new features are added at a breakneck pace (like the blurry weather applet). I can imagine some manager shouting "ship it now!" when I look at it.
And some decisions seem to be business motivated, like trying to push Edge and trying to create restricted a "Chromebook"-like edition again and again, but they neither make sense business- nor technology-wise. It sometimes seems like nobody has the big picture over there.
Are they complaining about a few demo games pre-installed? I don't get it.
How to disable a lot of them: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-remove-advertising-window...
Also I've seen Windows updates install games without my permission. (for example once it installed Candy Crush).
The live tiles can display whatever MS wants, and sometimes what MS wanted there was ads for random applications and games.