It’s chosen by default, ready to download and install if you’re not paying attention.
For the first year of Windows 10’s availability, the operating system was offered as a free upgrade for anyone running a consumer version of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. To advertise this unusual offer, the company pushed an update known as “Get Windows 10” to users of those operating systems in a move that proved more than a little contentious. The promotion used some shady techniques to trick people into upgrading to Windows 10.
The Get Windows 10 software, however, has finally been purged from user systems. Mary Jo Foley spotted that a patch shipped yesterday, KB3184143, which removes the Get Windows 10 promotional software.
Broadly speaking, the Get Windows 10 program seems to have been successful. Windows 10’s uptake was unprecedented for a Windows release, with more than 350 million people now using the operating system—a number that hasn’t been updated for several weeks. We hope to hear more at Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Atlanta next week. The manner in which the program was operated, however, became increasingly underhanded; toward the end of the promotion, the ads felt straight-up deceptive, as they performed the upgrade even if you clicked the X to dismiss the window. That 350 million users number undoubtedly includes some number of Windows users who wanted to stick with Windows 7 or 8.1 but were tricked into upgrading.
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Source: Ars Technica – Contentious Windows 10 upgrade ads removed from Windows 7, 8.1