It takes Saturn 15 years to do an "about face" so that it's on the opposite side of the Sun. Perhaps Microsoft's code base, when printed out, is as massive as a planet.

Plus they are talking about caring about security and putting plans in place. Are they claiming they never cared and never had plans to make the situation better?

This is just like reporting on government where they report an idea a President mentions as "President dramatically reverses his entire 20 year belief system"

Cynically (and probably accurately), it’s a clever way to disguise a user feature (security) as a way to gather data so as to "protect" them. Sound familar?

The "about face" was when they decided that security really mattered (as opposed to the previous month, when shipping features really mattered, and security was an afterthought).

Right. They started being serious about security in 2003, it just took another 10-12 years for most people to get off of 2001's XP to actually start seeing the benefits. :)

When you have a code base as massive as Microsoft's, it is.