I'd rather describe this as a mail-in-rebate for the costs of running Windows 10.
We sort of implicitly know there is this need to make the Windows lifestyle more sane, and can rely on tools like these existing.
But the time it takes to research this, track down the best binary for the job (examining the source code is not always easy), makes me conclude that there's a real hidden cost to being a Windows user.
The most impressive thing about Microsoft as a company is the way it single-handedly lowered user expectations to the point where ads, security issues, and critical time-wasting failures are somehow considered an acceptable price of entry, and not evidence of an unacceptably shoddy, incompetent, and user-hostile product culture.
The relevant dichotomy is more like: people who run Windows aren't the buyers. One-off personal licenses for home PCs are more than a rounding error but are certainly not what made Microsoft what it is.
Governments and F500 companies buy Windows and Office for X00,000 machines for X0 years of support at a time. Enterprise procurement teams are the actual buyers whose opinions matter to product managers.
Does MS sell their telemetry data?