Get Windows 10

Microsoft's Get Windows 10 campaign is persistent, aggressive, and occasionally annoying. Annoying enough, in fact, to have spurred a cottage industry in third-party upgrade-blocking tools.

But despite those complaints, the program appears to be working.

Eight months after its launch, Microsoft says its new operating system is being "actively used on more than 270 million devices." Windows boss Terry Myerson made the announcement today at the opening of Microsoft's annual Build conference in San Francisco.

In his remarks introducing Myerson, CEO Satya Nadella said Windows 10 is "off to the fastest start in Windows history" and is being adopted at a dramatically faster pace compared to Windows 7 in the same timeframe, among both consumers and enterprise customers. Microsoft didn't offer any comparisons with Windows 8's adoption rates.

Today's milestone represents a major leap since the beginning of the year, when Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was in use on 200 million devices.