[eproxus]

It's basically the blog post version of "Yes | Remind me later". I have very little trust at this point that anything tied to short term financial interest will change (OneDrive, AI, Recall, Microsoft accounts vs local accounts, data collection etc.). Obviously (to us, but apparently not to them) it is ultimately tied to long term financial interest. I don't believe they are able to see that based on the decisions they've been taking the last decade.

[rmunn]

Short-term profits vs long-term profits is a tension that many companies end up making bad choices about. A comment elsewhere in this discussion by safety1st mentioned the stages companies tend to go through. First, growth, growing market share by providing a good product. Then, in safety1st's words, "TAKING PROFITS wherever it can find them. This includes but is not limited to cutting back on its investment in product, as much as it can. If it can cut budgets and quality and give that money to the shareholders it will. If it can inject ads into the product or resell your data it will." Then decline, because you've focused so hard on short-term profit that you've sacrificed the long term.

The only part of safety1st's comment that I disagree with is that all companies go through this. It's not true. Most do, but not all. There are SOME companies that manage to resist short-term thinking, and remain focused on long-term profit by continuing to make good products that their customers like. They do tend to be the ones owned by a small number of people, rather than publicly traded, but they exist. To name just one, McMaster-Carr. They still make quality machine parts, just as they did about a hundred twenty-five years ago when they got started, and from all reports their customers remain quite happy with them. Their website is one of the better websites out there, too.

But yes, Microsoft is falling victim to the short-term vs long-term thinking trap that so many other companies fall into. They're trying to claim, in this post, that they're going back to thinking long-term, i.e. NOT alienating the customers you'll still need ten, twenty, thirty years from now. But I don't think they're truly shifting their mindset.