I dont see start menu ads? I see the account manager button will take you to your m365 account instead of your local account settings. This is what’s inside the article, i dont know where they got the title from.
I think that started on Win8 and fully implemented on Win10. I don't remember Win7 have this BS. At least not obvious that makes me remember if they have.
Yeah, I haven't used Windows for like 15 years, so I don't remember exactly when they started pushing for cloud accounts. But it's not new with Windows 11, it's been their focus for at least 10 years now.