Advertising Embedded on the Operating System
October 26, 2009 by Milo Riano
Filed under Computers
Advertising was the safety net that Google had when they launched their search engine. Initially they wanted to have their search engine technology licensed to the enterprise and at the back of their mind advertising would be a contingency plan. As it turned out, advertising became their primary option turning billions of dollars in revenues.
Desktop applications on the other hand were purchased through licenses and advertisements downloaded from the net through desktop applications were deemed security issues that security firms like Symantec blocked through their anti-spyware or anti-adware programs.
Steve Jobs is on the other side of the bed as he wants advertising to fill our operating system with ads and has filed a patent that embeds advertisement right on your desktop. Are we getting the operating system for free?
The patent attorneys were focused making sure every aspect and detail of the patent are well explained. One of the sections of the patent says the operating system can halt the operating of the system to make sure the user gets to focus on the advertisement. Again, are we getting paid when that happens? The patent goes even further by making sure they have not identified the personal computer only for the advertisement but it encompass every device that has an operating system which includes tablet PC, portable devices, pocket PCs, celfones, etc.
Microsoft is the largest software company in the world and its operating system is running on 1 billion of the 1.2 billion computers in the world. I wonder what the software giant is thinking about that patent. Should have they thought about that sooner? Or have they thought about it and felt it was plain stupid.
Microsoft is making lots of money through its licenses and I don’t think they would ever change that business model. Apple has been a revolutionary company and they may be able to pull this through especially when they offer to give out rebates or money back to the sale of the operating system whenever their OS has made money through advertising directly to the desktop.
Image from my Windows 7 computer.
