Ah yes, I see now. I definitely agree with you then. That line will most likely not sit well with employees that don't give a damn about the shareholders and would rather just create amazing products.
I wouldn't say stupid things like this. I work in Windows Phone and I have a lot of faith in our product (and judging by reactions to the 1020 and our customer sat ratings, it looks like I'm not alone). The Xbox One is exciting, and Windows 8+ has definitely opened a new chapter for the company.
If you have something stupid to say, keep it to yourself.
After the NSA revelations, the absolute last thing I plan to do is install a high-resolution, always online camera from Microsoft (or any major US corporation for that matter) in my living room.
No doubt. I am, however, interested in using depth-sensing technology for less nefarious, non-cloud-based means (see my profile). I like the technology, but I strongly dislike what Microsoft might do and is doing with it.
I dunno, I work in the cloud space, largely with fortune 500 companies, and I don't know of any off the top of my head that are investing in Azure.
That doesn't mean the article isn't technically accurate, of course, but I'd suspect that MSFT is being very generous with their definition of "using" and counting any pilot project in some engineering team as "using" - in which case I'm sure that most of the fortune 500 have someone somewhere playing with Azure.
But that's not the same as using from the standpoint that we typically think about it.