[zuminator]

I'm more curious about what their thoughts are. They have to know what the community thinks about these moves. What do they intend to accomplish? I'd like to hear the roadmap from the lion's mouth, so to speak, if they have some kind of justification that would make sense to the skeptical observer.

[rs186]

It is a command from the top, possibly very top aka CEO. What the community thinks doesn't matter. What matters is how much ad money they earn and how much of your private information they can track.

[luke727]

The justification is money. Microsoft doesn't make any money off of offline accounts.

[kbolino]

They used to get money from selling products, like Windows. That we are in this situation where they choose to give the OS away for free but then have to scramble to find money in obnoxious ways afterward is bizarre to me. It's not like they started this process with zero market share.