Without the MS account, it is _much_ harder to sell OneDrive, Copilot, Office365-whatever subscriptions etc to their users.

I get it. I get that they need to upsell their customers OR their product would be more expensive. I'd be happy to pay that premium though, and I'm not going to buy any of those additional things.

But let's not pretend that this is purely an evil or thoughtless design choice that isn't economic in Nature. Windows has a cost and that cost gets subsidized by all the people who buy additional services.