Isn't every Chrome download unique?
It used to be even though the package contained an Authenticode signature, each installer stub download had a unique hash, because Windows' digital signatures allow a non-executable data area in the trailer which is not computed as part of the signed data.
There is zero technical reason to do this (generating unique binaries) aside from tracking purposes.
I'm familiar with these global IDs because I routinely used the Windows telemetry system as part of my work on the Windows core at Microsoft. We had strong policies on how and when we could access or use data for a single device as identified by global ID.
But ultimately, these policies will have a "government or court order" exception in reality even if not in theory, just like in most other consumer software observability systems. The Windows difference is simply the breadth of data that is intentionally collected by Microsoft or can be identified by any Microsoft-controlled IDs. That difference is huge in potential impact but very small conceptually.
Must a website direct the user to log into their MS account before it is able to get a hold of the user's global ID information?
then verizon did it for (to?) mobile phones.
I guess these things get normalized, people might say "those jerks" and then put it out of their mind.
The alternative is not running any proprietary tech. This would require people to give up a lot of convenience, build their own tech stack, make tools where none exist, etc. Doable for most on this forum I'd suspect, not really feasible for the population at large so the choice is even worse for them: be spied on, or abstain from using technology all together.
Its a captive audience, and why advocating for privacy is such a difficult, losing battle. People aren't going to stop using Windows because of this, so Microsoft has no incentive to do anything differently. Same goes for Meta, Google, Apple, etc.
Even for myself, I've gotten really lazy over the years and have traded quite a bit of my computing freedoms for the Apple device ecosystem's convenience factors. And that's the trap. When even the people who understand exactly what they're giving up still choose the golden handcuffs, the market has no incentive to change.