I worked at Microsoft for many years and, although I wasn't in the room when Legal and others made this decision, I can easily imagine how the conversation likely went down based on my experience with Microsoft group-think and the typical manager's posture there.
Microsoft wouldn't have trawled through a user's email if they weren't as big as they are -- that's fact #1. And this proves that they actively throw their weight around even when the ethical standard, regardless of their privacy policy, begs otherwise. They are too big, they should have been broken up, the government dropped the ball on the anti-trust case. The consent decree DID NOTHING to alter behavior, it just forced behaviors into different manifestations, but the big, bad bully culture permeates every team in Redmond... it's toxic and now it affects the hundreds of millions of users who innately trust them.
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Telling Example of Microsoft Culture
Microsoft wouldn't have trawled through a user's email if they weren't as big as they are -- that's fact #1. And this proves that they actively throw their weight around even when the ethical standard, regardless of their privacy policy, begs otherwise. They are too big, they should have been broken up, the government dropped the ball on the anti-trust case. The consent decree DID NOTHING to alter behavior, it just forced behaviors into different manifestations, but the big, bad bully culture permeates every team in Redmond... it's toxic and now it affects the hundreds of millions of users who innately trust them.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by m117.
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