Microsoft is in the same business as Google. Search, Bing. Gmail, Outlook.com. GCP, Azure. They even operate an ad network.
Google has some bad incentives but Microsoft has all the same ones. If not, why isn't there a single button for "never send any of my personal information to Microsoft" anywhere in Windows 10?
Microsoft and Google may have competing products, but they are in completely different businesses. Microsoft is in the business of software, Google is in the business of data. That's why there's a public Bing Search API[1], but there's no public Google Search API.
[1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
In what way are Windows and Edge "software" but Android and Chrome are not?
> That's why there's a public Bing Search API[1], but there's no public Google Search API.
The company that is operating a data service is the one not in the data business?
> The company that is operating a data service is the one not in the data business?
A company in the software business charges for the usage of its software (Windows, Bing API). A company in the data business gives the software for free, and monetizes the data it collects about its users (Android, Google).
A services API isn't software. You're not buying a copy of the code and running it on your computer. And Google offers the same category of thing (paid services), e.g. the Google Maps API or G Suite, while Microsoft offers free services equivalent to google.com and gmail.com like bing.com and outlook.com.
Meanwhile Microsoft has been giving away actual software like Windows 10 for free, along with a variety of other things like IE/Edge (including for non-Windows platforms), VS Express, the Skype software, etc.
They're direct competitors operating in largely the same markets and using the same business models.
It's called SaaS, which stands for "Software as a service"[1].
> They're direct competitors operating in largely the same markets and using the same business models.
Google generates 84% of its revenues from ads[2], Microsoft generates 95% of its revenues from software[3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service
[2] https://martechtoday.com/google-posts-31-1b-in-total-revenue...
[3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2018-Q1...
In other words, you're not buying a copy of the code and running it on your computer. So the provider has all your private information.
And if that's "software" then how is Google not a "software" company? All their services are that.
> Google generates 84% of its revenues from ads[2], Microsoft generates 95% of its revenues from software[3].
It's understandable that you missed this, but the distinction you're making is arbitrary. Microsoft can book ad revenue under software and service categories because the software/service is what generated the ad views. They definitely make more than 5% of their revenue from ads.
Percentages are also useless in general. If Google merged with Amazon (which has much higher revenue) then most of their revenue wouldn't be from "advertising" but how would that change their incentives at all? If anything it would be worse -- now they're providing more non-advertising services to you and have the incentive to spy on you via those services to increase their ad profitability.
So, literally every click you make is trickling data back to Facegoogsoft, because that’s how indexing works.
It's unfortunate that every large vendor today has short-term incentives to screw users.
Google, on the other hand, is fundamentally incentivized to sell ads, which requires collecting data. The more data they collect, the more money they make. As the saying goes, we are the product. No amount of hand-wringing or shaming is going to change that fundamental fact.
I think that in 100 years we're going to look back on how personal data is used the way we look at barbaric medical practices of the Dark Ages. People in general just didn't know or expect better.