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Comment by StableAlkyne | Hacker News Reader

> he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions

Windows doesn't even make up 1/5 of their income, and in contrast a bit over half of their income is Office and Cloud*

The real money is in enterprise IT and cloud services. The average consumer doesn't keep their prebuilt computer long enough to buy another version of the OS. They don't need to keep a niche within a minority (privacy-oriented customers who would buy an OS) happy with Windows to continue drowning in revenue.

It seems like he has done a fantastic job, if the goal was to decouple their fortune from Windows.

*Based on googling and a lazy reluctance to dig through their earnings calls

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It's a mystery to me why they haven't made Windows free yet. Surely they make much more money from users using Windows than buying Windows

Only PC enthusiasts buy Windows. 99% of the population gets it bundled with their computers and who knows how much MS is charging those OEMs. Probably pennies.

Windows already has a de facto monopoly in desktop OS. They don't need to be nicer and give it for free to get more market share. They have all market share they every will.

It basically already is, at least for consumers. You can download an .iso of whatever the latest Windows version is and install it, and although it will prompt you to put in a product key, nothing stops you from continuing to use it if you don't. You can't customize certain cosmetic settings, and there's a small watermark in the bottom left corner, but it's hard to imagine that it being fully functional otherwise is an oversight rather than something they're fine with. The only people who will go through the effort to install it like that and keep using it are the ones who are least likely to pay for it.

This is true: my gaming PC had that watermark for nearly 10 years. You can't change the wallpaper, remote desktop doesn't work, but that's the only downside to not paying for windows (and using Microsoft's free iso, instead of pirating a key).

It's quite clear to anyone who's tried it (at least since Win10), that Microsoft does not care at all if you pay for Windows.

It comes preinstalled on most computers. The consumers don't pay, OEMs do. And they'll continue to pay because most people don't want an OS-less machine.

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