There is no way Microsoft is going to force through a Windows 10 upgrade without full approval of the consumer. They are most likely wanting a way to communicate with Windows 7 users about the new features and offer a free ($100-150 value) upgrade. This is hardly something nefarious.
At the last MVP Summit we urged the Ten Team to educate MS's 2 billion desktop consumers on the benefits of Apps like Mail, Weather, People, News and the like on their Start menu, since Windows 8 disastrously tried to force these without having any but social media consumers aware even of what Apps are and how useful they can be. It was suggested that a good way to do this is short video vignettes, so that may be all these "ads" will be. I understand our resistance to popups but they are offering something for free so perhaps there is a tradeoff to consider there.
It certainly will not be any attempt to sneak Windows 10 on your PC as MS learned from Windows 8 that happy Windows 7 users are not going anywhere without being sold on it and they would face an even worse disaster than Windows 8 if they tried to force it. Windows 8 may have succeeded best at finally coaxing millions of XP holdouts to upgrade to....Windows 7, which is only now at the top of its curve.
At that MVP Summit on MS campus in November, I was identified to the Ten Team by the top MS Community MVP as the biggest supporter of Windows 7 they would ever meet. I then related how I had been using Windows 10 for over a month (then) and found it faster and in many ways better than Windows 7. I told them that the problem was going to be making it as likeable to consumers as Windows 7 and for that they needed to sell the purpose of apps, possibly with short videos to demonstrate how easy it is to pop nine webmail accounts into a pleasing single Mail interface with large reading pane. I like having my latest Mail, News briefs, Weather forecast, Skype activity and People updates (popped from each address book, then linked to their Facebook) at a glance on my Start Menu. This is a real improvement on Windows 7 that
doesn't force a Wall of Buttons that slams down on your work like a guillotine, but is via fully customizable tiles over to the side of a familiar Start menu which resizes to include as many as you want.
So this may very well be paving the way for them to introduce Windows 10 to us in such a way as to invite more consumer interest to its features. Perhaps they could do this better via TV commercials, or they may do both. What it is
not is an attempt to force Windows 10 on people who don't want it yet.
The Windows 10 Team is too interactive, too chastened by the Windows 8 disaster, to overstep in such a way. And they are agile and interactive enough they can jump back quickly which may be what they did with some Updates.
I hope here at the esteemed home of Windows 7 we don't become like the XPirees who've stopped by for years only to yell at us to get off their lawns.
