There has been an opt-in for »Share anonymous usage details with Microsoft to make stuff better« since ages in Windows and other Microsoft products. So if yo enabled that, I presume they will log telemetry about what features of Windows are used, how often, together with which other features, etc. I wouldn't expect that to extend to non-Windows programs since there's little they can learn from it.

Executable name would probably be valuable. They could easily maintain a hand-curated list of Office-alikes, for instance (the list would be small enough to manage), to track what competitive products are being used and any trend in those.

This would provide competitive information and could help point the way to features that are important to users, based on the differentiation between the competitive product and Office.

I have no idea if they do this or not, but it's something that anonymous data could be used for outside of just Windows features and programs.

Yes, you could circumvent this sort of thing, but this is a case of the 99.99% of people who wouldn't care or know how to vs the .001% who do. For the use case outlined above, that's irrelevant.

I would be interested to know why you are being downvoted.

Because it's well known by anyone interested in this area? There's been a barrage of "Windows 10 Telemetry/Privacy" related stories since its release. It's also publicly documented by Microsoft itself: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/itpro/windows/manage/con...

"Performance and reliability data, such as which programs are launched on a device, how long they run, how quickly they respond to input, how many problems are experienced with an app or device, and how quickly information is sent or received over a network connection."

Because it's a comment that asks a question based on actually reading the linked article, and this is hacker news.

Also my first reaction

I was more surprised seeing internet explorer in that list

Did not read the terms eh? On "tracking disabled" how some stupid fucks tend to call it they still collect usage and crash data. Its all documented but nobody cares...