Nick Bradbury brings up a bunch of great issues now that Microsoft is looking to get more into the advertising business.

Trust. Privacy. Ugliness. Appropriateness. Context.

I'm with Nick. The idea of pasting advertising on everything is vile. Vile. Hmm. Evil. Vile. Evil. Vile. Live. Anagram time!

Sorry, I got sidetracked there. Heheh.

But Nick is right. Microsoft can destroy value by doing advertising people hate.

Funny, I just sat next to a guy in the Seattle Airport. He delivers RVs for a living. He told me he threw out his TV cause he was sick of getting interrupted by advertising.

He told me he loves the Web because most of the time advertising is constrained and doesn't interrupt him.

We'd do well to listen to both him and Nick.

One thing in our corner? We have great user testing and feedback labs. Executives and engineers alike can even watch people as they try out our products and services and listen to what they say.

If anything Google taught us there's a way to do advertising that adds value to everyone involved. I hope it's a lesson we continue taking to heart. The Windows Live Mail team gets it. Who's next?