content: Except that I think all this fear mongering and 'You're the product" is just BS. Microsoft has a vested interest in gaining marketshare in the desktop market. right now they are facing horrid adopting rates with Windows 8/8.1 and are stuck supporting multiple old versions and backpatching all of them. I think their long game is several fold: 1) After 10 comes out, aggressively move to shorten 'span-of-life' for old OS's 2) Sell 10 licenses to OEM and business where MS traditionally makes all their OS money anyway (sorry any microsoft OS hasn't flown off shelves since '95) 3) Open-source and release .net to gain developer attention and possibility of cross-platform .net 4) Get above developers interested in making apps for Windows Store, become a new storefront selling content and taking a cut doing absolutely nothing In the end it's about getting profit from it's OEM/business customers, it's about reducing maintenance costs,  and becoming a storefront.  So yes, they're oh-mah-gawd collecting data on you, how else can they compete with Google and Apple who wholesale collect your data. How else could you possibly expect 'magic' like Cortana to work without data collection? Ugh.  Do I think it was handled well? No not particularly. Do I think there should be a big master switch to turn all the collection off ? Sure. Yes, of course. Do I think this is pure tin-foil hat, clickbait generating hyperbole? Yep.