It's so weird to me that a company like Microsoft would care that much about "reputation". Everyone basically hates them already. Many of the most successful companies in the US are widely (if not universally) hated by the people who pay them. Nobody loves comcast, or exxonmobil, or centurylink, or EA, or equifax, or facebook. People feel trapped and unable to avoid paying some companies or using their products no matter how much they hate them. How many people have paid Microsoft for their OS at all? How much money would they really lose if they ignored the bad press? How many grandmas would start downloading linux?

I'm glad Microsoft is making changes, but I wonder how much is out of fear for their reputation and how much is just to try and comfort people and get the news to stop talking about it so that everyone doesn't just disable it as soon as it rolls out.