Microsoft CEO: change of closing cross function with Windows update went too far
Microsoft’s marketing chief Chris Capossela says in an interview that his company went “too far” when it changed the function of the closing cross on Windows 10 updates. Users who clicked away the pop-up with the update notification in this way still agreed to the update, as it turned out earlier.
The statement, noted by SoftPedia, was made by Capossela in the Windows Weekly YouTube broadcast. One of the interviewers asked Capossela what moments he would name in a negative review of the past year. The Microsoft CEO replied: “From a marketing or branding perspective, I have to mention the moment when we became too aggressive in offering the free upgrade to Windows 10. Things went well for much of the year, but there is one moment when we went too far.”
He is referring to the moment that Microsoft showed an update notification with the option to upgrade to Windows 10 immediately or later. Users who clicked on the red cross and assumed they had canceled the update later found out that they had agreed to the upgrade after all. Microsoft later responded to the criticism by adding an additional pop-up.
Capossela says: “Normally the red cross means ‘cancel’, but that didn’t work in this case. Within hours of releasing the change, we knew we had gone too far thanks to our listening systems. some time to release an update. It was two very painful weeks, but we learned a lot from it.” In addition to this incident, the CEO mentions two other personal lows. He mentions adjusting the expected number of Windows 10 devices.
Microsoft initially set a goal of having 1 billion Windows 10 devices worldwide by 2018. In July, the company revised this expectation, without specifying a new target. In this context, Capossela discusses the disappointing telephone results of Microsoft. Phones should have been a big part of the 1 billion devices. His third point is the telephone branch of Microsoft, about which he says that selling the feature phone division was a difficult decision.