The ideal user to Microsoft appears to be an uninformed one, not interested in control and apprently willing to reliquinsh it. Not all Microsoft users are uninformed or disinterested in control. There are profound exceptions. Some of those exceptions will read this comment and respond accordingly. But hundreds of millions of non-exceptions will remain uninformed and disinterested, to the benefit and delight of Redmond.
Obviously, malware can thrive under the auspices of uninformed, oblivious users, Microsoft's ideal customers. Microsoft will purportedly protect them, when it wants to and assuming it can; of course, it won't protect them from Microsoft itself. For those Microsoft employees and users not reading, commenting and/or voting on HN, enjoy the ads injected into Windows. Microsoft is happy with the result.
1. Worth noting perhaps, Microsoft was making an estimated $2B annually from patent royalties on Android. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-may-relinquishing-b...
(The point that commenters/voters appear to be missing is that it is the nature of the customer/user that creates the attractant for malware as much if not more than the software itself or the size of the user base. GNU regardless of what one thinks of them is AFAICT advocating for user control in this communication. That implies users who care about control, not the average Microsoft user. Users who are paying attention and who do not blindly trust companies like Microsoft. One can argue it is the "insecurity" of the software or the number of users that creates the attractant, and there is certainly some truth there, but it makes no sense if, e.g., the user base is a large number of paranoid users who read HN. They are going to avoid/prevent/detect malware better than a random sample of Microsoft users. User behaviour is relevant. If 9 out of 10 users who run program X on operating system Y are careless, then program X and/or operating system Y is arguably an excellent target for malware.)