[kbenson]

I winder how much of Microsoft's focus on documentation and having full teams to produce it was also spurred by the nature of their enterprise business and the whose ecosystem of certification and training it supported (which in turn supported Microsoft in a cyclical nature). Microsoft has a whole set of of official test prep and training material, certified trainers, etc.

Even if the documentation department never made a profit themselves, I imagine being able to point to some revenue and it being an important part of the overall business strategy kept it as feeling fairly important to most execs.

[ethbro]

It also likely traces back to support.

In that Microsoft has it, Google doesn't, and Apple... magic?

But if you're going to run a competent support org, you need to have high-quality, easily-accessible documentation. Because you're not going to know anything about {insert random thing support ticket is asking about}.

And if you've already created those docs for internal use, why not simply make them public?