[shiroiuma]

> I really wish they would have kept focus on Windows and taken the high road and made it better, more secure, more private

Why would they do this? It makes zero sense. There would be zero (or really negative) ROI for doing as you suggest here. They already have a near-monopoly on desktop OSes, and these improvements you want aren't going to change that or improve the profits they get from the Windows business. It would have been colossally stupid for them to spend a ton of money making Windows "better" instead of what they did, which was to spend money on other projects, and to inserts ads and other annoyances into Windows while doing the bare minimum and also gutting their QA team. MS isn't losing any money on Windows from security problems, ads, or any other things you might think are problems.

>just to prove that "the big boys" make money on selling actual products, not their users.

Except that wouldn't have worked, because that's not what makes money now. The users have proven they don't care about high-quality products, especially for OSes.

[mrweasel]

You are 100% correct, I'm just sad that this is the state of modern business practices and mindless focus on profit above all.

It would never fly, but I'd much rather see better and safer product than another 20% on Microsofts bottom line. Business people would call me a commie.

[shiroiuma]

I'd rather see people simply switch to a better (and generally free) alternative, but they don't want to do that for some reason... It's like the old saying about a horse and water.