8 ms·

Microsoft is really shooting themselves in the foot with their terrible approach to privacy ever since Win10. Given that they earn money by selling actual produ

Microsoft is really shooting themselves in the foot with their terrible approach to privacy ever since Win10. Given that they earn money by selling actual products, they could stand right next to Apple as a defender of privacy if they wanted to (unlike Google, which has a business model which depends on data collection)... but they choose not to. It's not so long ago, in 2011, they had this video, targeting Google's privacy problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0 Now they're no better than Google. What happened?

danieldk 7y ago
Indeed, this is surprising for many reasons: - B2B is a large part of their income, telemetry has probably damaged their reputation as a business vendor. - They have mostly failed at social media (except LinkedIn and Skype, which they have bought). So, there is no strong need for them to collect all this data to profit off (otherwise free) social media. - They have a strong developer story with WSL, Azure, etc. They could have replaced Apple as the darling of developers. But not with telemetry, start menu ads, etc. - At least in the EU, more privacy is where the puck is going. They could take on Google's weaknesses.
- snazz 7y ago
  And it’s hard to see any benefits of them collecting all this data. If I remember correctly, there was a rumor that their telemetry told them that nobody used the Start Menu, leading to the Windows 8 debacle! Have they pushed any new features lately that have been directly attributed to data collection?
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Almost everything? Insider Blogs continue to make it pretty clear that in the Windows 10 "Windows as a Service" world, almost everything is subject to telemetry based development/focus/resourcing. Insider Builds themselves often have A/B testing experiments in play. Even things like the giant Console rewrite and WSL apparently owe just as much to telemetry meriting their resources as the (return) of Azure and DevDiv's "developer-first focus" to Windows (after all these years). (A fun irony of the "Start Menu debacle" to which you refer was more of a sample size problem than a telemetry problem. With Windows Vista-8 keeping telemetry primarily opt-in, they mostly only had interesting subsets of newbie/casual users that clicked yes during setup and power users with vested telemetry interests. Newbie/casual users tend to launch apps "Search only" or "Desktop only" keeping all their shortcuts on the desktop. Power Users tend to use alternate launchers or become increasingly "Search only" over time, especially if you count Win+R old timers, which Windows did. Microsoft had a good argument that trying to make the telemetry opt-out would avoid such biased sample sets going forward.)
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      > A/B testing experiments I'm used to this on web and mobile - because arguably their apps are their private property which I'm using, but there's something incredibly uncomfortable about my operating system running an experiment on me. I get that Windows is also Microsoft's property, but it's the lowest level in the stack, which makes my hardware more theirs than mine if they're able to do what they want with it. I'm not even against telemetry as long as it's transparent. Maybe I'll go back to Linux soon.
      - WorldMaker 7y ago
        So far as I know, the A/B experiments haven't happened in "RTM" (or "RTW" as more accurate) builds, only Insider builds (which are opt-in). The Insider blogs have also been generally transparent in which tests were performed, at least after the fact, but big ones were also announced well in advance to avoid confusing users. The biggest/wildest example that was A/B tested to date was Sets. Sets was a feature/system where nearly every window in Windows was heterogeneous tab-capable. (Illustrative example: Open a Word document, add a tab for some OneNote notes, add a browser tab for some research. Save it all as a Set to the Windows Timeline as Set, open it all back up at once.) But ultimately Sets never made the cut out of testing (too many compatibility issues, not enough telemetry usage, too confusing a UX sometimes, not enough apps in the wild with Windows Timeline support, etc) and it sounds like the project is now dead. (Supposedly it was partly dropped too because apparently they were piggy backing on Edge's UWP tab control and with Edge going "Edgmium" that tab control was considered less critical infrastructure to any team and less of an "in-box" control to piggy back off of. Microsoft Terminal got a version of the UWP tab control pushed out into the open source UWP control toolkit, but probably not in time to be reconsidered as an in-box control for Windows.) (I was sad I never ended up in the group with Sets turned on. I wanted to play with it.) (ETA: Also, I really hope as Edgmium gets closer to launch it uses a XAML Island to pick back up the UWP tab control where possible. That would be one great way to feel a bit more Edge and a bit less Chrome knock-off.)
    - bradknowles 7y ago
      Microsoft wants to be like Facebook, where they can make each and every pixel on screen a part of an A/B test, and gather ineffable amounts of telemetry based on that information, which they can then magically turn into amounts of money that would embarrass even God. They fail to understand that "Be Like Facebook" is not a positive aphorism or outcome.
- notatoad 7y ago
  >B2B is a large part of their income, telemetry has probably damaged their reputation as a business vendor. Don't their Enterprise and business editions of windows omit all the telemetry?
  - jlgaddis 7y ago
    No, not even close.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tpush 7y ago
  > - At least in the EU, more privacy is where the puck is going. They could take on Google's weaknesses. Ironically, it's Europe where privacy championing Apple is way less of a player than Google when it comes to smartphones and services, especially compared to the US market. So I'm not sure if a privacy conscious approach would buy them much in the EU, at least among consumers.
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    Mostly due to 1 EUR = 1 USD pricing and other problems. Europe is a tier2 market for Apple.
    - gruez 7y ago
      >1 EUR = 1 USD pricing Isn't that mostly explained by the fact that EUR prices have VAT included (typically 20%) and US prices do not?
      - StreamBright 7y ago
        I don't think so.
  - fruffy 7y ago
    I was not able to find concrete sources but I think that has more to do with the expensive pricing of iPhones and Apple's former image as a somewhat invasive and consumerist company. I remember there being a decent amount of distrust against their vendor-lock-in techniques. Overall, I would say consumers' privacy-sensitivity in Europe expresses itself largely in the increased usage of Telegram, Tor, Firefox, and Linux compared to the US.
    - Y_Y 7y ago
      I don't know why you've put "former" in there. Lots of people have iphones in Europe, but everyone knows it's an expensive commitment, and if you use all the nice integrations and Apple services it's hard to extricate yourself.
- Razengan 7y ago
  > They could have replaced Apple as the darling of developers Hardly, from my perspective, but do you have sources for that claim, or for Apple formerly being the "darling" for that matter?
  - nawgszy 7y ago
    If one speaks from a Silicon Valley perspective, they call Apple a developer darling because it seems like every developer has an Apple laptop
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      True, but Apple has a huge developer fan base whereas Microsoft didn't until very recently, and that's only due to their massive course correction with WSL, VSCode, among others.
      - jodrellblank 7y ago
        Microsoft, the largest software company with the most-used OS by businesses, most popular pc gaming platform and Xbox, maker of visual studio - The standard dev tool on windows, the biggest java competitor, one of the big SQL engines, one of the big web servers, has had a huge developer fan base since long before Ballmer’s famous “developers” presentation. Much much bigger than Apple by having much much more marketshare of everything except smartphones.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  B2B only cares if there is a compliance problem. Office has sent documents in crash dumps up to Microsoft for a long time. None of the hand wavy security guys say much about it, because it isn’t an audit finding.
  - copperx 7y ago
    That's insane. Is it still happening? Docs being sent to MSFT?
antoinevg 7y ago
I think the thing to understand about behemoths like Microsoft is that if the "others" are collecting data then your career will benefit if you hep Microsoft do what the "others" are doing.
muricula 7y ago
What happened? Microsoft used to have an army of testers who would do a mix of manual and automated testing to help ensure the quality of the product. In 2014 they were all fired. Their strategy for testing Windows is now three fold: - Devs are expected to test their own code now - There is now a program where customers can use beta builds of Win10 and report issues - MS relies on telemetry to find and fix issues Today there's lots of old code from the era before automated tests were widespread in the industry, and often automated tests which were previously maintained by the testers are now bitrotting. The culture of testing is not strong among developers in some parts of the company. The beta program can't catch everything either. So telemetry it is. And you need some telemetry. Minidumps/coredumps make debugging certain kinds of crashes much easier, and Apple captures that sort of data too. And I guess seeing whether people use some widget in Office a lot/not at all could be useful for improving the product. In practice it also leads to issues with the GDPR and governments, which MS does ultimately fix. Apparently Win10 Enterprise users have a switch somewhere where they can turn off almost all telemetry, but not so for Home and Pro users, say what you will about that.
- m0xte 7y ago
  Regardless of this I expect, as a paying customer, to be asked and have that choice respected.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  > Microsoft used to have an army of testers who would do a mix of manual and automated testing to help ensure the quality of the product. In 2014 they were all fired. > ... Devs are expected to test their own code now I'll never understand this line of thinking. A good tester doesn't think the way a good developer does. It's a different but equal and necessary skill in order to provide a strong product.
  - studentik 7y ago
    Fully agree! Development is about making things work, testing is about breaking things. Sadly, some managers think that 'developed' includes 'tested' and expect flawless results from developers. It's like being a dancer and a painter simultaneously - possible, but has its limitations.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

danieldk 7y ago

Indeed, this is surprising for many reasons: - B2B is a large part of their income, telemetry has probably damaged their reputation as a business vendor. - They have mostly failed at social media (except LinkedIn and Skype, which they have bought). So, there is no strong need for them to collect all this data to profit off (otherwise free) social media. - They have a strong developer story with WSL, Azure, etc. They could have replaced Apple as the darling of developers. But not with telemetry, start menu ads, etc. - At least in the EU, more privacy is where the puck is going. They could take on Google's weaknesses.

snazz 7y ago
And it’s hard to see any benefits of them collecting all this data. If I remember correctly, there was a rumor that their telemetry told them that nobody used the Start Menu, leading to the Windows 8 debacle! Have they pushed any new features lately that have been directly attributed to data collection?
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Almost everything? Insider Blogs continue to make it pretty clear that in the Windows 10 "Windows as a Service" world, almost everything is subject to telemetry based development/focus/resourcing. Insider Builds themselves often have A/B testing experiments in play. Even things like the giant Console rewrite and WSL apparently owe just as much to telemetry meriting their resources as the (return) of Azure and DevDiv's "developer-first focus" to Windows (after all these years). (A fun irony of the "Start Menu debacle" to which you refer was more of a sample size problem than a telemetry problem. With Windows Vista-8 keeping telemetry primarily opt-in, they mostly only had interesting subsets of newbie/casual users that clicked yes during setup and power users with vested telemetry interests. Newbie/casual users tend to launch apps "Search only" or "Desktop only" keeping all their shortcuts on the desktop. Power Users tend to use alternate launchers or become increasingly "Search only" over time, especially if you count Win+R old timers, which Windows did. Microsoft had a good argument that trying to make the telemetry opt-out would avoid such biased sample sets going forward.)
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    > A/B testing experiments I'm used to this on web and mobile - because arguably their apps are their private property which I'm using, but there's something incredibly uncomfortable about my operating system running an experiment on me. I get that Windows is also Microsoft's property, but it's the lowest level in the stack, which makes my hardware more theirs than mine if they're able to do what they want with it. I'm not even against telemetry as long as it's transparent. Maybe I'll go back to Linux soon.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      So far as I know, the A/B experiments haven't happened in "RTM" (or "RTW" as more accurate) builds, only Insider builds (which are opt-in). The Insider blogs have also been generally transparent in which tests were performed, at least after the fact, but big ones were also announced well in advance to avoid confusing users. The biggest/wildest example that was A/B tested to date was Sets. Sets was a feature/system where nearly every window in Windows was heterogeneous tab-capable. (Illustrative example: Open a Word document, add a tab for some OneNote notes, add a browser tab for some research. Save it all as a Set to the Windows Timeline as Set, open it all back up at once.) But ultimately Sets never made the cut out of testing (too many compatibility issues, not enough telemetry usage, too confusing a UX sometimes, not enough apps in the wild with Windows Timeline support, etc) and it sounds like the project is now dead. (Supposedly it was partly dropped too because apparently they were piggy backing on Edge's UWP tab control and with Edge going "Edgmium" that tab control was considered less critical infrastructure to any team and less of an "in-box" control to piggy back off of. Microsoft Terminal got a version of the UWP tab control pushed out into the open source UWP control toolkit, but probably not in time to be reconsidered as an in-box control for Windows.) (I was sad I never ended up in the group with Sets turned on. I wanted to play with it.) (ETA: Also, I really hope as Edgmium gets closer to launch it uses a XAML Island to pick back up the UWP tab control where possible. That would be one great way to feel a bit more Edge and a bit less Chrome knock-off.)
  - bradknowles 7y ago
    Microsoft wants to be like Facebook, where they can make each and every pixel on screen a part of an A/B test, and gather ineffable amounts of telemetry based on that information, which they can then magically turn into amounts of money that would embarrass even God. They fail to understand that "Be Like Facebook" is not a positive aphorism or outcome.
notatoad 7y ago
>B2B is a large part of their income, telemetry has probably damaged their reputation as a business vendor. Don't their Enterprise and business editions of windows omit all the telemetry?
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  No, not even close.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tpush 7y ago
> - At least in the EU, more privacy is where the puck is going. They could take on Google's weaknesses. Ironically, it's Europe where privacy championing Apple is way less of a player than Google when it comes to smartphones and services, especially compared to the US market. So I'm not sure if a privacy conscious approach would buy them much in the EU, at least among consumers.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  Mostly due to 1 EUR = 1 USD pricing and other problems. Europe is a tier2 market for Apple.
  - gruez 7y ago
    >1 EUR = 1 USD pricing Isn't that mostly explained by the fact that EUR prices have VAT included (typically 20%) and US prices do not?
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      I don't think so.
- fruffy 7y ago
  I was not able to find concrete sources but I think that has more to do with the expensive pricing of iPhones and Apple's former image as a somewhat invasive and consumerist company. I remember there being a decent amount of distrust against their vendor-lock-in techniques. Overall, I would say consumers' privacy-sensitivity in Europe expresses itself largely in the increased usage of Telegram, Tor, Firefox, and Linux compared to the US.
  - Y_Y 7y ago
    I don't know why you've put "former" in there. Lots of people have iphones in Europe, but everyone knows it's an expensive commitment, and if you use all the nice integrations and Apple services it's hard to extricate yourself.
Razengan 7y ago
> They could have replaced Apple as the darling of developers Hardly, from my perspective, but do you have sources for that claim, or for Apple formerly being the "darling" for that matter?
- nawgszy 7y ago
  If one speaks from a Silicon Valley perspective, they call Apple a developer darling because it seems like every developer has an Apple laptop
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    True, but Apple has a huge developer fan base whereas Microsoft didn't until very recently, and that's only due to their massive course correction with WSL, VSCode, among others.
    - jodrellblank 7y ago
      Microsoft, the largest software company with the most-used OS by businesses, most popular pc gaming platform and Xbox, maker of visual studio - The standard dev tool on windows, the biggest java competitor, one of the big SQL engines, one of the big web servers, has had a huge developer fan base since long before Ballmer’s famous “developers” presentation. Much much bigger than Apple by having much much more marketshare of everything except smartphones.
Spooky23 7y ago
B2B only cares if there is a compliance problem. Office has sent documents in crash dumps up to Microsoft for a long time. None of the hand wavy security guys say much about it, because it isn’t an audit finding.
- copperx 7y ago
  That's insane. Is it still happening? Docs being sent to MSFT?

antoinevg 7y ago

I think the thing to understand about behemoths like Microsoft is that if the "others" are collecting data then your career will benefit if you hep Microsoft do what the "others" are doing.

muricula 7y ago

What happened? Microsoft used to have an army of testers who would do a mix of manual and automated testing to help ensure the quality of the product. In 2014 they were all fired. Their strategy for testing Windows is now three fold: - Devs are expected to test their own code now - There is now a program where customers can use beta builds of Win10 and report issues - MS relies on telemetry to find and fix issues Today there's lots of old code from the era before automated tests were widespread in the industry, and often automated tests which were previously maintained by the testers are now bitrotting. The culture of testing is not strong among developers in some parts of the company. The beta program can't catch everything either. So telemetry it is. And you need some telemetry. Minidumps/coredumps make debugging certain kinds of crashes much easier, and Apple captures that sort of data too. And I guess seeing whether people use some widget in Office a lot/not at all could be useful for improving the product. In practice it also leads to issues with the GDPR and governments, which MS does ultimately fix. Apparently Win10 Enterprise users have a switch somewhere where they can turn off almost all telemetry, but not so for Home and Pro users, say what you will about that.

m0xte 7y ago
Regardless of this I expect, as a paying customer, to be asked and have that choice respected.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
> Microsoft used to have an army of testers who would do a mix of manual and automated testing to help ensure the quality of the product. In 2014 they were all fired. > ... Devs are expected to test their own code now I'll never understand this line of thinking. A good tester doesn't think the way a good developer does. It's a different but equal and necessary skill in order to provide a strong product.
- studentik 7y ago
  Fully agree! Development is about making things work, testing is about breaking things. Sadly, some managers think that 'developed' includes 'tested' and expect flawless results from developers. It's like being a dancer and a painter simultaneously - possible, but has its limitations.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]