Re:Arizona Bill Requires Age Verification for All Apps
by hekkle on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @04:45PM
(#47066890)
> I'm much more convinced Microsoft wants to do stuff like sell cloud subscriptions at the click of a button in the desktop than Microsoft gives a crap about those subscriptions being tied to a consistent account ID. The latter certainly sounds evil, but not in a way that particularly helps Microsoft over their competitors.
Bless your cotton socks, you had it in the first part MS wants to sell stuff, but then you failed to realise that by tying people to a consistent account ID builds a profiling on them that lets MS serve targeted advertisements, through Edge.
Uncle Bob probably would probably need to do a decent amount of work to figure out how to purchase a OneDrive subscription from having no account, particularly if they think "I've already got an account - that's how I log in!". If the PC forces Bob to walk through creating a cloud Microsoft account before he even sees the desktop then the only step remaining is to click to OneDrive (or whatever) sales notification and enter a credit card so his "important personal files stay backed up" (or however they pitch the service in the notifications).