[robododo]

Calling the data gathering intrusive is a bit of a stretch. Considerable efforts are made to ensure you're anonymized and personally identifiable information is not gathered. There are people to actively work to ensure you're not "tracked" in any way.

Off-Topic: I'd be interested to see the number of people who turn off the Microsoft CEIP (terrible abbreviation), yet still use a Google id and/or accept DoubleClick cookies.

[ygra]

That's the nice thing about web applications: You can do user tracking without needing them to opt in.

As for me, I trust Microsoft enough that I always opt in. And I've seen a few times that such data is invaluable when making feature or UI decisions.