It's a distraction, an attempt at deflection. The real question here is: why do these fresh Windows installs need to connect to "Data Research" 3rd parties at all?
"They're must be doing something almost no one would ever do!"
More importantly, the author never said it only does DNS lookups. He just filtered for that to keep the amount of data manageable for illustration purposes. DNS lookup is usually the first step in opening a connection.
Do you have any information that the author(s) are lying? That it is only DNS requests? Given the hundreds of similar confirmed new stories? Dark patterns? The NSA slides pre 2013? My guess is not. And easy to reproduce if needed. My guess is that these connections don't go away with more use.
Why are we talking about this? Proverbial red herring.
I'm not going to make assumptions about "the software MUST have connected because the domain name was looked up". It's not my job to connect the dots: it's the job of the person making the assertion to actually substantiate the assertion, otherwise their assertion will be ignored by people like me who actually expect such substantiation.
No, I have no information that the author is lying, and I didn't even begin to suggest as such. I have pointed out the absence of substantiation, which is an observation of fact.
btw RE: "everyone in the industry knows": https://www.logicalfallacies.org/argumentum-ad-populum.html I don't care if "everyone knows", if someone makes an extraordinary claim, my response is always "prove it". I don't believe things just because other people do.
If you honestly want to learn about the subject I'd start with the PBS Frontline documentary called "The United States of Secrets."
Next, learn about "surveillance capitalism." The Facebook and Social Dilemma, on Netflix are eye-openers.
Another milestone was Apple giving their OS away for free. Combined with Linux always being free and popular on servers, that made expensive Windows a much harder sell. There's a big cost to develop a modern OS, so there's a great incentive to "monetize" away that cost. In practice that means advertising and surveillance which is exactly what you are seeing here.
This is a story developing for over ten years. That a few pieces of the thousand piece puzzle are not delivered on a silver-platter is immaterial to the discussion.
Just to answer, I can guarantee that geolocator and marketing research pings are not there for "no reason whatsoever." No, they are not just being friendly. Someone on the other end is paying for that server capacity. The capacity to handle billions of requests from Windows users. Without lots of value creation, MS would be hit with a lawsuit from these folks that were being DDoSed.