The mistake you're making is that you're thinking like a user instead of an MBA. MBAs are taught that when you have a profitable segment of the business that is

The mistake you're making is that you're thinking like a user instead of an MBA. MBAs are taught that when you have a profitable segment of the business that isn't growing (such as Windows license sales), the correct move is to spend as little money as possible maintaining it and spend all of its profits on business segments that are growing (in Microsoft's case, cloud services, gaming, and advertising). Once you start looking at things through this lens, Microsoft's handling of Windows starts to make sense. For example, they've laid off their full-time Windows QA staff in favor of volunteer "Windows Insiders", and have basically given up on having a consistent look and feel for their operating system. Meanwhile, all their new Windows features and programs exist to drive business to growing business segments. To name a few examples, Visual Studio Code and WSL exist to drive business towards Azure and Github, Edge exists to collect user browsing data to sell to advertisers, and the game bar (Win+G) and preloaded Xbox app exist to drive business towards Xbox. They even replaced the right Windows key on their later (made after ~2019) keyboards with an unremappable button that launches the cloud version of Microsoft Office.