Oh, you know it, you just don't want it to be true. Every business out there knows it too. The age of consumerism driven growth is gone, killed by the ever growing financial gaps between the layers of society in all western world. There is no point in playing nice to attract customers if they can't pay, so businesses are stealing from the poor (mostly data in the case of MS) and selling only to the rich (higher valuation). The products that are marketed are not the products that are needed for the companies to make money off of.

This shift might not be as visible with IT companies, but look at more obvious examples: even fucking McDonald's has stopped going after customers needing affordable meals and is going after fewer but richer customers. So do hotels. So do airlines. And yes, so do IT companies.

In the case of Microsoft, they have a lot of experience with fucking over low end consumers and then bouncing back too. They were the most hated company in the 2000s and pivoted to one of the good guys by the end of 2010s. They know they can afford to alienate customers for long periods of time with no lasting issues

[–] Butterphinger@lemmy.zip 11 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

ya got me! I knew

My prediction is that by 2040, Windows and your entire online existence as a... "normie" will be encapsulated within walled gardens via client access almost entirely.

Those of us still able to host anything will be doing it with ebay finds and crowsourced parts.

...but this is but one of my many branching possible timelines, maybe we get the "America goes KEN mode" timeline, "Mother nature rolls her sleeves up" or the "Humanity finally stands up for itself and realizes a leftist/socialist utopia" timelines. There's always the "China sics robot dogs with machineguns on everyone" timeline.

Hell, maybe a blend, idk.

[–] frightful5680@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Sir, this is a Wendy's. The only blend I know of is the coffee. (J)