One thing I am surprised no one has been discussing is the role Microsoft have played in this and how they set the stage for the CrowdStrike outage through a lack of incentive (profit, competition) to make Windows resilient to this sort of situation.

While they were not directly responsible for the bug that caused the crashes, Microsoft does hold an effective monopoly position over workstation computing space (I'd consider this as infrastructure at this point) and therefore have a duty of care to ensure the security/reliability and capabilities of their product.

Without competition, Microsoft have been asleep at the wheel on innovations to Windows - some of which could have prevented this outage.

For example; Crowdstrike runs in user space on MacOS and Linux - does Windows not provide the capabilities needed to run Crowdstrike in user space?

What about innovations in application sandboxing which could mitigate the need for level of control CrowdStrike requires?

The fact is; Microsoft is largely uncontested in holding the keys to the world's computing infrastructure and they have virtually no oversight.

Windows has fallen from making over 80% of Microsoft's revenue to 10% today - there is nothing wrong with being a private company chasing money - but when your product is critical to the operation of hospitals, airlines, critical infrastructure, you can't be out there tickling your undercarriage on AI assistants and advertisements to increase the product's profitability.

IMO Microsoft have dropped the ball on their duty of care to consumers and CrowdStrike is a symptom of that. Governments need to seriously consider encouraging competition in the desktop workspace market. That, or regulate Microsoft's Windows product