4 ms·

This feature seems to me to be a real mistake from Microsoft. From a PR standpoint it's terrible, and it's a tiny feature that I'm sure drives very few sales.

sandworm101 6y ago
What does microsoft care about sales? This isn't the sort of thing that would make someone used an MS product over an Apple or F/OSS product. Such decisions are generational, occurring only once or twice the life of a company. So at the end of the day this is a "feature" being added into a product that people are already using. Nobody really chooses to have it or not. It just becomes an option that will sit quietly in every office machine or remote access account just waiting for an evil manager to flick the switch. Hey Microsoft! Can I pay extra for fork of windows/o365/office/whatever that doesn't and will NEVER have this ridiculous feature? I am putting my marker down. I am willing to pay MORE money for LESS evil in my machine. The more evil ideas you come up with, the more I will be willing to pay to keep them away. That is the reality in which we live.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Obviously you can turn off any feature you don't want, if you are the customer. If you are a user, talk to your admin.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    That is definitely not obvious. There's a lot of things on my iPhone and my Windows PC that I cannot turn off, even though I am the customer.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  I checked (as MS365 admin) and it's not enabled for us. I don't know if that's the default for Europe, for everyone, or if Microsoft intend to enable it themselves later.
  - CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
    I’m pretty sure this would be illegal to enable in many places. At least in Sweden the law explicitly prohibits monitoring of work performance in computer systems.
postingpals 6y ago
This is the kind of thing that is used to stop unionisation and in most cases to check if there's a serious productivity bottleneck, it is probably more valuable to microsoft than sales in the long run.
- 2fast4you 6y ago
  How would this be used against unionization?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  How come? In many countries it is enforced by law, and in some of them, everyone on the building gets it, regardless if they are cleaning bathrooms, or doing CI/CD pipelines on a random cloud deployment.
indymike 6y ago
For every person who hates this feature, somewhere there's someone with a fat checkbook who loves it.

sandworm101 6y ago

What does microsoft care about sales? This isn't the sort of thing that would make someone used an MS product over an Apple or F/OSS product. Such decisions are generational, occurring only once or twice the life of a company. So at the end of the day this is a "feature" being added into a product that people are already using. Nobody really chooses to have it or not. It just becomes an option that will sit quietly in every office machine or remote access account just waiting for an evil manager to flick the switch. Hey Microsoft! Can I pay extra for fork of windows/o365/office/whatever that doesn't and will NEVER have this ridiculous feature? I am putting my marker down. I am willing to pay MORE money for LESS evil in my machine. The more evil ideas you come up with, the more I will be willing to pay to keep them away. That is the reality in which we live.

alisonkisk 6y ago
Obviously you can turn off any feature you don't want, if you are the customer. If you are a user, talk to your admin.
- mulmen 6y ago
  That is definitely not obvious. There's a lot of things on my iPhone and my Windows PC that I cannot turn off, even though I am the customer.
Symbiote 6y ago
I checked (as MS365 admin) and it's not enabled for us. I don't know if that's the default for Europe, for everyone, or if Microsoft intend to enable it themselves later.
- CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
  I’m pretty sure this would be illegal to enable in many places. At least in Sweden the law explicitly prohibits monitoring of work performance in computer systems.

postingpals 6y ago

This is the kind of thing that is used to stop unionisation and in most cases to check if there's a serious productivity bottleneck, it is probably more valuable to microsoft than sales in the long run.

2fast4you 6y ago
How would this be used against unionization?
pjmlp 6y ago
How come? In many countries it is enforced by law, and in some of them, everyone on the building gets it, regardless if they are cleaning bathrooms, or doing CI/CD pipelines on a random cloud deployment.

indymike 6y ago

For every person who hates this feature, somewhere there's someone with a fat checkbook who loves it.