> and as Windows 10 demonstrates, the amount of telemetry is anti-correlated with software quality

What's wrong with Windows 10? I think it's great

And an otherwise sane friend of mine thinks Alexa is dope. I guess it's always a matter of where you draw the line, I for my part, want to be in total control of who gets sent what concerning ALL my devices, and I think this should be my right as a citizen and customer.

> their initial telemetry attempt was using Google Analytics which is definitely malicious)

What's wrong with Google Analytics? As long as the ad retargeting bits aren't enabled ( they aren't by default), it's just a regular anonymous analytics solution.

> What's wrong with Google Analytics? As long as the ad retargeting bits aren't enabled ( they aren't by default), it's just a regular anonymous analytics solution.

This assumes you trust Google? Why would you trust an entity that's both got a business incentive to stalk people, is able to hide it (given how many factors go into ad targeting it's impossible to reliable prove from the outside which data was used to target an ad) and is big enough to successfully fob off regulators and get away with it (their current data processing consent flow violates the GDPR for example)?

May I have a source for this anti-correlation please?

Try to switch off the "telemetry" in Windows 10.

Windows 10.