When is an ad an advertisement and not a recommendation? Microsoft clearly likes to use the term recommendation for what others may see as an advertisement.
There are recommendations in the Start menu, Settings app, Lock screen, File Explorer, Get Help app, and other areas of the operating system already. These are often not that useful. App recommendations in the Start menu are limited to Microsoft Store apps.
Now, Microsoft is testing recommendations in the Microsoft Store app. If you never use the app, you won’t be exposed to these. If you do, you may notice recommendations popping up when you try to use the built-in search.
First spotted by phantomofearth on X, two or three recommendations are shown whenever search is activated in the official Microsoft Store app.
I think it is already happening gradually. SteamDeck has single handedly opened the eyes of so many already. M1 Macs did that for macOS as well.
I think it’s grossly undersold personally. What valve has managed is getting the single target platform open source could never agree on.
It’s a small miracle, and it bleeds over into stuff like device driver support in a way I don’t think most people who didn’t deal with Linux in the 2.x era immediately appreciate.
If Linux on the desktop has a surge, they did a lot of the legwork.