From ZDNet:
When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he asked what the company's place in the world is, and how it could make the biggest contribution.
What he kept coming back to was that the company builds things that empower people to build their own things. When he looked at Microsoft, he saw software that could be a force to "democratize and empower people."
Nadella articulated what that vision means for the future of Azure, Windows, Office, Cortana, Linkedin, and more during his keynote address--on a telepresence link--at Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2016 in Orlando on Tuesday.
In conversation with Gartner analysts that featured lots of Nadella's usual well-crafted, nuanced statements, he also boldly declared:
"Windows is the most open platform there is."
Really? Windows? Not Linux, or FreeBSD, which are both open source and both free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer?
Sure, the Windows platform overall, from Windows 95 to Windows 7, has been open in the sense that anybody who wanted to write Windows software could do so -- Microsoft didn't have the ability to vet every piece of Windows software before it was released, and so didn't try to control what developers did or didn't sell for use on the platform.
By Windows 8, though, Microsoft was already working hard to change all of that. Win8 was extremely unpopular, in no small part because it turned peoples' desktops into iOS-style App Stores, which Microsoft curated, all while taking a cut of all proceeds -- the very definition of a "walled garden," in other words, which is exactly the opposite of open. Windows 10, with its Universal Windows Platform and Windows Store bullshit baked right in, is significantly worse, not better.
The trend has clearly been going in the wrong direction for years... which is why Nadella is making this ridiculous claim to a roomful of Gartner analysts in the first place. It's damage control.
But wait! It gets better worse:
The other topic where Microsoft's approach to data privacy came up was Cortana, the company's AI-powered virtual assistant that is competing in an increasingly crowded field that includes players such as Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and IBM Watson.
Nadella highlighted several key principles in Microsoft's approach to privacy on Cortana:
- Whatever data we have, we have to keep it secure
- Provide transparency (users know what Cortana knows about them and can control it)
- Be compliant with regulations
That last seems to be a reference to CNIL's regulatory action, to which Microsoft is required to make an official response in the very near future. ZDNet's bullet points kinda gloss over what Nadella actually said about Cortana, though, which is a shame because it's amazeballs.
Cortana will operate on "four pillars," which include keeping data secure, as well transparency, meaning that users will "know exact what Cortana knows," said Nadella. There is also an ability to turn off data access. The fourth pillar is to be compliant with regulations, he said.
I've highlighted the missing pillar (i.e. the one ZDNet chose not to mention at all): the ability for users to turn off Microsoft's data access. This is especially noteworthy in today's context, since Windows 10 Home users currently can't do this. At all. Does this mean that the ability to turn off Telemetry and Cortana, and have Windows Update respect those decisions and leave the shit turned off, will be coming to Windows 10 in the near future? Because it's sure as fuck not in there now.
This is the very heart of consumers' current lack of trust where Microsoft is concerned. Nadella's team have been harvesting users' data, disregarding and resetting users' privacy settings, and forcing Cortana (and Bing!) down users' throats for months now, and now Nadella has the shitting nerve to claim that transparency and the ability to turn off data access are now "pillars" of all the Microsoft does? Seriously?
Even compliance with regulations is only something that Microsoft is doing belatedly and grudgingly, after being on the receiving end of regulatory action -- it's not something they did proactively, on principle.
When I read that quote, I was so nonplussed that I didn't really know how to respond, beyond "Fuck you, Microsoft." That's still where I am with this.
Fuck you, Microsoft, and fuck you, Satya Nadella. After this past year, you don't get to claim that your compliance with regulations is some sort of principled stance you're taking for the sake of Windows openness as a platform, especially when everything else about Windows 10 is aimed directly at a monopolistic, walled garden, iOS App Store experience, with you as the corrupt gate-keepers, creaming your percentage off the top of every software sale to every Windows 10 user from this point forward.
Did I mention that I'm rooting for Microsoft to fail at that? Because I am. Even if I hadn't been before, I definitely would have been today, after reading about the latest bullshit to come out the mouth of Satya Nadella on the subject.
#FuckYouMicrosoft #FuckYouSatyaNadella #MonopolisticBullshit #ThatsNotWhatOpenMeans #Unreal