[German]Microsoft just can't help itself and is forcing its business customers in Microsoft 365 to advertise Python in Excel. An administrator among the blog readers pointed this out to me (thanks for that).
A reader's report about annoying advertising
The German blog reader works in a corporate environment where Microsoft 365 with E5 licenses is used. Now an employee in the blog reader's team has recently been shown advertisements in Excel (see the screenshot below).
The reader sent me the above picture with the advertisement as an attachment (thanks for that). I was left speechless – the advertisement addresses the user by name – I have pixeled the name in the image above.
In the text, the baffled user is told that they can use the Python add-on in Excel to get more computing power. They are then offered buttons to request a license or buy the Python add-on. At this point, I spontaneously asked myself what kind of weed the people in charge in Redmond are actually smoking.
In September 2024, Microsoft made it possible to use Python via an add-on in Excel to analyze the data. The page here describes this approach.
That's a No-Go
Just to spell it: In the above environment, Microsoft 365 is used in a company via an E5 license. Not every employee can just order a license to Microsoft's offer. As the reader writes: "This happened on a business PC with an MS365 E5 license". In a private environment, the reader would not have been surprised that something was suddenly being advertised. But in a professional context, this is a no-go.
The reader writes that they do not want every user to be able to request licenses. The reader adds that in organizations of any kind, there is usually a central office that takes care of the provision of licenses.
The reader asks whether I or the readers are aware of similar cases where such advertising has been displayed? I have not yet received any reports of this. The only thing that spontaneously comes to my mind is: "How contaminated must they be in Redmond to carry out such actions with Microsoft 365 E5 business customers?
