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No clue why am I being downvoted? Maybe it will help to show my point if I say more... Windows didn't always have WGA on it, but people have been paying for Windows for decades. My first Windows license was Windows for Workgroups. 95 and 98 didn't have WGA, and earlier versions of XP didn't have it either. WGA came labeled as a "Critical Security Update."

People paid money and bought computers that came bundled with Windows licenses, and then they paid money for Windows major updates, and then ultimately Microsoft decided to bundle most of the updates for free. But one day in one of the free updates, they added in WGA (how is this not bait and switch of loyal paying customers? My operating system needs to phone home for security reasons?). But you had to opt-in. Then they decided in a later free update that it wasn't such a great idea to allow their users to permanently opt out, and their software got increasingly aggressive about making sure WGA was always enabled. You could opt out, but it tried again. And finally you just couldn't opt out anymore.

Then they used dark patterns to ensure you would think you needed a Microsoft account just to log into their computers. Wait was it your computer? Now this article about someone whose Microsoft account was closed without explanation and they're up shit-creek for it.

Is this not all absolutely part of the same conversation? It's a long history with a lot going on in it. This is not a rant against Microsoft, but a cautionary tale against depending on SaaS and letting it creep into your stack, as that's apparently also what Windows has become now, too.

I was 10 years old in the 1990's and recently I realized that I had actually convinced (or suppressed) in my memory that IE was never really a monopoly, but the historical statistics on browsers tell a very different story. So maybe my memory is not so good about IE, and given that I switched to an Open Source system in my teenage years and didn't look back, perhaps that can be excused, but still most people actually haven't. (Hell, some are still using IE...)

I guess it's true that, with the coming of the Internet, and the possibility that you could easily download and pirate Windows, if everyone knows this and WGA doesn't happen in 2008, then your security is legitimately at risk if Microsoft can't profit off of Windows, because then they won't have any incentive left to provide updates except at cost... and you need updates (we need you to get updates, it's like a vaccine that herd immunity only works to stamp out the disease if most people get innoculated.)

Microsoft is much bigger now than when the internet was new, and I think are not really worried about making a profit off of Windows anymore. But as a Windows user, I think that understanding of the history and assessment of the current state of where we are at with Windows profitability and updates would be troubling, for me.