Meanwhile, today Microsoft gifted us a brand new "News & interests" area in the taskbar lobbying for our focus and attention. Successfully... I even had to google how to turn it off, and write this comment.
> but Linux sucks, it's ugly, it's broken, it doesn't work, blah blah blah!
The amount of time people spend complaining about the evil shit their monopolist is doing to them would be better spent learning how to use Linux. It's not that hard.
A farmer isn't going to make changes to their business model because the cattle is complaining. Microsoft is going to keep doing what they're doing until the government steps in (which is unlikely to happen any time soon). Same goes for Apple, Amazon, Google, and all these companies that are immune to competitive forces.
Google has become the epitome of bad ux and user-hostile design.
Tongue-in-cheek LotR reference, but, it was pretty clear that Microsoft changed tactics after releasing Windows 10, turning it into an auto-updating evergreen OS without paid updates. They're earning money elsewhere now - Office365 and Azure are their big cash cows, I believe. But other departments are pressured to make money too.