Fair point! I think my lack of trust in Amazon has less to do with trusting them with my data and more to do with an existential fear that they're going to eat the world.

It's all relative. One reason to trust MS more is that their business does not depend on your personal data.

Not for their lack of trying though, with their efforts in Bing and Windows 10 telemetry. It’s ony because no one uses their products that rely on personal information compared to the number of people who buy office and windows licenses.

They act like it does, though. Makes me think their target is data, and not operating systems / hardware.

Linkedin?

Here's my honest take on this: It's telemetry data, that as far as we know, doesn't impact you personally other than giving MSFT data to improve the product.* There are creepy personal violations that individuals can see/feel with Google/Amazon/Facebook..."wait, how did they know I wanted to buy that".

* - Note this does not mean that it's not being or will not be used maliciously in the future. The jury is still out.

You can disable it, albeit not with the default Windows UI. You must use Powershell or a 3rd-party tool, sort of like com.apple.telemetry.

From what I've heard updates just renable it too don't they?

No, they do not.

I have this weird perception that Microsoft is directed by incompetent idiots in suits. Every product they release is half-assed, the only thing keeping them alive is the momentum they've gained from Windows.

Instead, I feel like there are really smart people in the rest of the companies, even considering that some of them have evil intentions.