This is not something to be grateful for. They are normalizing spying by default.

I didn't say we should be grateful about that.

I'm saying that thankfully they are not using the threat of your guarded personal data being exposed because you want this feature but don't want to use Edge.

That's what they say in marketing materials, but TFA claims to have dumped their database and was speaking from experience dissecting that. Hard to say which should be trusted.

TFA is using a preview release of Windows modified to run on hardware that isn’t officially supported, I would lean towards trusting the marketing material on what will be supported at release.

"Thankful" for surveillance?

Thankful for not pushing Edge if you decide you want this feature. This feature is something the community has been independently creating for years.

Personally I don't think people should actually allow this type of feature. It's too much of a risk. But my point stands on its own, that at least they aren't creating an even more perverse incentive to use Edge, which they absolutely could have done, and seems the MO of the Microsoft today who would sacrifice all else to be able to say there's 1 or 2 more Edge or Bing users.

It’s a local database that isn’t even synced. It’s as much “surveillance” as .bash_history is.

What it actually is however is hastily slapped together, enabled by default, and secured about as much as any other random system file, so MS doesn’t get a pass here, but they’re not twirling their mustaches like some would believe.