Not exactly the latest news considering the patent was filed in late 2006, but neverthless the patent was only dug up recently by rumor sites. Who would have thought that Microsoft would be the one to patent this? Yes, it's true folks, the Redmond giant patents what will probably be considered as the largest adware system out there. Considering this will enter the home of any and everyone who will use the Windows operating system in the future...it's true impact potential is seriously mind boggling.
It's such a tremendously bad idea that it's almost bound to succeed. Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your hard drive to show you advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time. Yes, Redmond wants to own the patent on the mother of all adware.
Yes, it gets scarier...read on:
"Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements," says the filing. "The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier."
Scared yet? This should finish you off:
"A word processor may display a banner ad along the top of a window, similar to a toolbar, while a graphical ad may be displayed in a frame associated with the application. A digital editor for photos or movies may support video-based advertisements," the patent application says.
What will be the outcome of this proposal is yet to be found out, however, it has the potential to target users needs at a level far greater than just the traditional web ads.
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