Echoing others...
Nadella simply realizes that their adverts and lobbying efforts now undermine their own business, full stop.
"The cloud needs consent". Agreed. Yet Microsoft defaults to cloud storage for Windows 8 & 10. Do users get to give consent? Yes, but the question should be "Is user consent consent to default storage to "the cloud" given with an understanding of what is being asked of them"? To that I would say "No".
The article claims that Google is behaving like a bulldozer; I have no love for Google, but isn't it Microsoft that's being the bulldozer? Aren't they pushing users to products laced with "telemetry services" *cough*SPYWARE*cough*, pushing their customers to their new data-mining environment by leveraging their (still) monopoly desktop position? It looks to me like a play straight from the days of IE vs Netscape.
Google, as much as I dislike what they have become, is and has always been exactly what they are; an Internet based company that has products served up remotely from their servers to your browser. The Internet has always been Google's delivery mechanism, indeed they could not exist without it. Microsoft can exist without the Internet.
Microsoft was never an Internet based company, they empowered people with computing on their desktop. Microsoft was slow to take to the Internet, and when they did, they (ab)used their desktop monopoly position to crush the competition. They then tried to lock customers to their browser and extend control by use of browser-specific extensions. *cough*IE6*cough* Web Pages were (and still are) a bad idea. This ultimately hurt Microsoft. This time their previous strategy and accompanying tactics will rapidly demonstrate to the world how two-faced they really are, which, given that they are no longer indispensable, would be a very bad thing indeed.
What to do? Bury the hatchet, spin it as evidence of them being a more friendly and willing to compete company, and carry on carrying on. So, has the leopard changed it's spots? No. Has Google? Also no. In the case of Google it simply grew up, from a cute cuddly cub to a dangerous adult carnivore.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
