That said, it is a nightmare for privacy, security, and openness.
A nightmare for privacy and security given that they have the data (and likely the means to unlock it).
A nightmare for openness given that data interchange will be discouraged in favor of the walled garden.
> A nightmare for privacy and security given that they have the data (and likely the means to unlock it).
365 customers' data is fully encrypted and MS cannot just decrypt it with a click of a button, it is also sharded across multiple storage silos, so that it cannot even be copied out of your tenant unless you are the customer. They also have a 'high encryption' option where the encryption key can be held on-premises and not in any MS data-centre.
> A nightmare for openness given that data interchange will be discouraged in favor of the walled garden.
I have no idea where you got this idea from, or what you even mean. 365 is a platform. If you want to run Linux VMs in it, you can. If you want to reach out and exchange data with non MS services like other cloud apps outside of 365 (or even on-premises apps) you can.
Picture your own personal datacentre full of kit but run by someone else. That is the 365 experience. I'm not someone who drinks the MS Kool-aid, but I do know the facts as I work in a MS partner company. If you'd said something similarly wrong about AWS, I would defend that too.
That being said, this level of deep integration means that the moment you boot the cloud PC, all of the data are potentially very vulnerable on the software level.