Not for the first time, Microsoft has developed a winning formula to frustrate Windows users! The latest windows update was released a few days ago, but it wasn't until today that I got my hands on it, and after installing it, a pop-up ad was inserted into Google Chrome. [a small box appears in the lower right corner of the browser, displaying ads for the Bing search engine and BingAI. My first thought was that I had probably downloaded something malicious while messing with the mods. The popups never looked classy, more like something you would see on a suspicious website. However, I quickly started an anti-virus scan and googled the problem (in Chrome, of course).

So first of all: most of us rely on Windows, and its absolute position in the OS market allows it to invade our PC experience. This particular pop-up sets Bing as Chrome's default search engine when you click "yes" to the prompt.

Microsoft did this again last year, adding a pop-up to Windows 10 and 11 that suggested alternative Microsoft apps.

Microsoft has confirmed that the pop-up is a genuine Microsoft ad and that it appears only once. I have seen at least two, and frankly, I don't trust Redmond on this one. Because Redmond is always coming up with new ways to tarnish the Windows experience.

"This is a one-time notification that gives you the option to set Bing as your default search engine in Chrome," Caitlin Roulston, Microsoft's communications director, told The Verge. Almost unbelievably, she describes this as a perk for users who accept the BingAI prompts and get a bonus from Copilot.

What really annoys me about Windows is that over a long period of time it doesn't respect my choices, overrides them on a whim with certain updates, and makes my machine do things that Microsoft wants but I don't. If at some point I could just say "no thanks," and it would be honored with multiple updates, I wouldn't be so bothered about Microsoft's various attempts to trick me into using Bing.

Windows failed when it was annoying, adding irritating images to the Windows search bar, trying to add Bing and Edge search boxes to the taskbar, automatically launching when an Edge browser session is complete, etc. Updates are made, and with each update, I wonder what fresh torture Microsoft engineers have come up with. It's enough to make me nostalgic for Clippy.