From The Reg's Iain Thomson:
Ever since Satya Nadella took over the reins at Microsoft, the Windows giant has been talking up how much it loves Linux – but it appears this hasn't trickled down to its OneDrive team.
Plenty of Linux users are up in arms about the performance of the OneDrive web app. They say that when accessing Microsoft's cloudy storage system in a browser on a non-Windows system – such as on Linux or ChromeOS – the service grinds to a barely usable crawl. But when they use a Windows machine on the same internet connection, speedy access resumes.
Crucially, when they change their browser's user-agent string – a snippet of text the browser sends to websites describing itself – to Internet Explorer or Edge, magically their OneDrive access speeds up to normal on their non-Windows PCs.
In other words, Microsoft's OneDrive web app slows down seemingly deliberately when it appears you're using Linux or some other Windows rival. This has been going on for months, and complaints flared up again this week after netizens decided enough is enough.
"Microsoft has been pulling this stuff for the last 30 years and won't stop any time soon," huffed one penguinista on Tuesday. "If you commit to using their products, expect to be jerked around if you try to do anything other than live in their expensive walled garden."
We asked Microsoft for comment, but the software giant didn't want to talk about it. If we're being charitable to Redmond, we'd say this is a case of Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Yeah, once again, I don't think that Hanlon's Razor applies: Microsoft does this shit so often, and so consistently, that it can't simply be incompetence. Don't get me wrong, a company that large almost certainly employs at least a few idiots, but for this idiocy to keep happening in every aspect of their business, it has to intentional, and it has to be systemic. Once is an accident, and twice is a coincidence, but we're well past the point of this being one or two isolated incidents; this is a well-established Microsoft pattern.
It is cool to know what that malice/stupidity saying is called, though: Hanlon's Razor. Thanks, Iain!
Now, full disclosure: I don't use OneDrive, so this issue isn't affecting me. My objection here is not a personal one. This is a matter of principle. Microsoft have been working very hard to give the impression that they're big on Linux, and gaining some decent PR in the process, but it's bullshit. When Forbes opined that "Microsoft has decided that the operating system is no longer an important battleground, and that it’s more important to gain market share in cloud (Azure and Office 365) than it is to put energy into battling Linux for application market share," they were mistaken. Microsoft is all about forcing users onto Windows 10, right now, to establish the walled garden ecosystem on which they're clearly relying heavily for their future.
Microsoft really have bet the farm on this strategy. They really don't have a plan B. And their mounting desperation is becoming increasingly obvious, too. This is systemic; they really are doing this, and they really don't care how much damage they do to their own brand and reputation in the process, but they really haven't left themselves any other options. They need the ad revenue. They need their cut of Windows 10 Store sales. They've given too much away, at this point, and don't have any way to walk that back. At least, not one that Satya Nadella can see, or one that he'll sign off on.
GG, Satya Nadella. GG.