[gargravarr]

The argument that Win10 is free won't hold for much longer, it's only 'free' if you upgrade from Win7 or 8. It's already being sold retail in stores for a similar price to the old versions. And from later this year, people will have to pay for upgrades too.

On the flipside, you don't "own" your software anyway, you own a license to use it (EULA).

The double-standard probably has something to do with the ability to block most of Google's ads and tracking, or use another search platform if you really want. This is the OS on top of which you'll be using all of your other software (web platforms included), and it's impossible to control what is going on in the background.

[seanp2k2]

While I agree with the difference, it should still be possible to block these types of ads with some kind of firewall. Unless the OS is blocking the blocking at a lower level (which I'd be VERY surprised by), something like Privoxy and using that as the system proxy for http[s] should be able to knock these out if they're loaded dynamically. I haven't tested this, so it would require some inspection and network monitoring to figure out what's serving these. Some hosts file entries may even be enough.

[opnitro]

I think that's different because you are subverted the OS's attempts to advertise to you. Most people are not willing to go to this level. Changing search engines is not subverting Google, it's just not using their product.