Comment by snovymgodym
3 months ago
I'm not convinced Microsoft cares about the Windows market share in consumer PCs or the small amount of money they make from selling Windows licenses to regular consumers.
If they did, Windows wouldn't be so usable unactivated and the MassGravel activation stuff would have been patched already.
They built up their almost-monopoly when it mattered in the 90s and the 2000s, and now their market position is basically secured.
For Microsoft's purposes the main way of making money from Windows is from business and enterprise sales, and those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.
The reason they don't meaningfully enforce their copyright on consumer PCs is precisely because they do care about their market share. If you buy a computer with Windows (or get it installed) in what I suspect is the overwhelming majority of the world, it's an 'illegitimate' copy and it works 100% fine, including operating with Microsoft's servers.
As you mentioned, they could trivially stop this if they wanted to, but they don't. Because if this were not possible, there'd be billions of more PCs out there running instead what would most likely be Linux. Enabling people to use Windows without paying is a key component of their strategy of maintaining market dominance, especially on a global level.
I think the biggest 'threat' to windows for general users has been mobile, besides that it seems like it's mostly running on momentum from the ecosystem of decades ago. The challenge is that most migrations for established users of any system take effort, and right now the effort of running activation/account requirement bypasses is low effort compared to changing to and learning a new OS.
The way of framing it which works for me is that there doesn't seem to be much reason to move to windows, if you were starting computing with a blank slate and could pick anything, why would someone want to pick windows? Most people need a mobile anyway which serves a lot of consumer needs. Gaming is a big one if you're not happy with mobile/console, but there's the wine/proton on linux route although there's a subset that won't work or has compatibility issues (from minor paper-cuts to major). And then there's those that need specific windows-only software with no alternative elsewhere.
Also note this strategy is in its fourth (or fifth?) decade and is also very successfully deployed by adobe et al. It’s also why Linux won on the headless server, though why FreeBSD didn’t I’m not sure; GPL marketing at the right time, perhaps.
> though why FreeBSD didn’t I’m not sure
The same reason why Ubuntu won the server market (for a while): by capturing the home-desktop/laptop market first, and then worming its way to employer environments by way of familiarity. Linux had broader driver coverage for consumer hardware; there was a time when running *BSD on fragmented consumer hardware was a crapshot.
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The funny thing is that I would be totally willing to pay for a license if in exchange for no ads and no needing a Microsoft account.
You can! Windows 11 Enterprise.
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>those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.
To an extent sure, but when people that grew up as home consumers not using Windows become business leaders they won't have the brand loyalty to Microsoft that the current aging out generation does.
If Google doesn't characteristically fumble the bag their dominance with ChromeOS in schools has potential pay major dividends in 10-15 years.
Windows centric software development is pretty much completely driven by business leaders 50+ years old on the young end.
A striking amount of business software runs on Windows because Microsoft was dominant during the peak PC era (e.g. 1990-2010). The companies running that stuff aren't doing so because old guys think Windows is good, they're running it because it's been built already and there's no real reason to change.
The next generation of business leaders already didn't build their companies on Windows or any other PC operating system because web apps replaced desktop apps and mobile devices overtook PCs in market share.
But it doesn't really matter to Microsoft. Microsoft isn't really the "Windows Company" anymore and hasn't been for some time. Azure, Office365, Sharepoint, etc. revenue dwarfs what Windows brings in and wouldn't be affected by Windows losing market share because everything is a web/electron client for a cloud service now.
In some ways, I suspect Microsoft views the Windows market share as more of a liability than an asset these days, because it makes them responsible for bad press events like BlueKeep and WannaCry. Business customers frequently buy support contracts with their licenses, whereas private consumers expect indefinite updates for a one time $120 fee. Given that, I wouldn't be surprised if they were intentionally letting consumer Windows slowly fade away.
Hum, how much of the success of azure is due to enterprise customers being in the windows ecosystem already? And what happens when the next enterprises are not?
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What percentage of new computers are sold running windows again? I suspect the reports of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
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> If Google doesn't characteristically fumble the bag their dominance with ChromeOS in schools has potential pay major dividends in 10-15 years.
There will be no ChromeOS anymore - just Android - and it will soon be locked down hard so that you need to pay Google or host ads/harvest data for every app.
You just need to make your choice of Tyrant landlord.
The crucial part: these business leaders won't see the ugly consumer side.
Enterprise windows is completely different, in that most of the crap we complain about will either be disable at the MDM level, or from the start depending on the license. A CEO being issued a windows laptop isn't barraged with ads, nor do they care if their account is local or not. It will "just work".
I don’t know, I work for a massive (benevolent of course) corporation and it’s still pushy with Lock Screen ads, copilot, etc… and it definitely doesn’t just work. Maybe for the CEO it does though…
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That is mostly a thing on US school system.
Do we believe that we’ll be using anything like today’s PCs and operating systems in 10-15 years time? I mean, that’s been the case since the 1980s, but now we have usable (if imperfect) AI.
Two reasons why so at least professionaly:
- Reliability. For anything that needs deterministic result and not even 99.9% of chance that it's generated correctly and not hallucinated. E.g. health, finance, military, etc. There is no room for "you're absolutely right". For the same input an algo must give the same output.
- Privacy. Until we have powerful local models (we might have though in 10 years, I don't know), sending everything to some cloud companies, which are already obliged by court to save data and have spy and ex-military generals in their boardrooms, sounds a bit crazy if it's not about an apple pie recipe. Web chat interface isolates important data from non-important, but we can't integrate it fully in our lifes.
Personally: Yes, I do. Likely, voice assistants and other AI tools will have a bigger market share in a decade, sure. But I doubt an interface like Alexa can replace a PC-like setup for most of the «real work». Instead, I imagine we’ll just continue the trend of laptops and tablets with AI assistants integrated in better ways, and perhaps a wider adoption of AR/VR in some sectors. Tre The tech that could replace today’s PC setup is a neural interface, but I doubt that NeuraLink et al will be anywhere near mainstream in a decade.
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How will we interact with this AI?
Talking to machines is a horrible experience, especially if you’ve got loads of people all trying to do it in an open-plan office.
Operating systems and CPUs may come and go, but there’s plenty of life left in the mouse and keyboard yet.
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If something displaces Windows in the consumer PC market, I wonder how long it is before those new OS consumers start to want to use what they're comfortable with in the business as well. Windows will start to feel like some weird legacy system. By the time business starts moving away, it will be too late for Microsoft to save.
This already sort of happened with kids using chrome books and android phones getting their first office job and having no clue about windows.
I think you're right that they don't care about the money from Windows licenses, but they seem to be pivoting to trying to pull data from consumer desktops for AI training. That's arguably way more valuable and no one besides Apple (or potentially Google) gets that kind of data.
As more and more public accessible areas start becoming so inundated with AI generated material, that makes the walled gardens where generated content is not AI generated that much more valuable for training.
Whether they care about consumer market or not, they know that most of the consumers aren't going to care about this problem. Hardly anyone would bat an eye at using their already existing Microsoft account/email address and internet connection to log on to their PC. They're almost 100% headed to get on the internet to do whatever anyways. These people are connected to the cloud 24/7. In the same way hardly any Apple user cares that they need an Apple account to get into a bunch of things/phone/whatever. This is a nerd/tech-niche problem.
> For Microsoft's purposes the main way of making money from Windows is from business and enterprise sales, and those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.
Yes, and making corporations and smaller businesses donate their stuff via official spyware os, clouded "services" and "agents" is perfect opportunity for spyware creator :) It is hard to blame them for wanting this :) Except that, probably, will explode in their faces...
Small businesses don't like creating Microsoft accounts either. Limit 30 software activations per email address or something like that. And retail Office stops working after 365 days offline.
"How did Microsoft go bankrupt?"
Two ways: slowly then all at once.