Those are called “trial balloons”. They announce a feature they know will be wildly unpopular to gauge the severity of the backlash, then temporarily reverse course while running a massive public outreach campaign to draw as much attention as possible to their feel-good response to the public: “we hear you and respect your opinions”, etc.
Then, when the buzz dies down, they re-implement those same things slowly and quietly. In some of your examples, their responses are literally nothing more than words in print; no actual actions have been taken that align with their announcements.
Unity somewhat fits that description, but it was definitely net negative for their business, and with how long it took them to walk back from it, I don’t think they had any plans to walk back before the backlash. Microsoft has been slowly making Windows worse for a long, long time; it wasn’t something they did all at once and then issued a “we hear you”. They are legitimately scared of losing their market dominance right now.
I’ll reserve judgment on Microsoft’s motives until I see them take even a single action, not statement, in a positive direction. Right now, they seem to just be putting a fake moustache on Copilot, calling it something else, and then claiming they’re rolling back frivolous Copilot integrations.
Those are called “trial balloons”. They announce a feature they know will be wildly unpopular to gauge the severity of the backlash, then temporarily reverse course while running a massive public outreach campaign to draw as much attention as possible to their feel-good response to the public: “we hear you and respect your opinions”, etc.
Then, when the buzz dies down, they re-implement those same things slowly and quietly. In some of your examples, their responses are literally nothing more than words in print; no actual actions have been taken that align with their announcements.
Unity somewhat fits that description, but it was definitely net negative for their business, and with how long it took them to walk back from it, I don’t think they had any plans to walk back before the backlash. Microsoft has been slowly making Windows worse for a long, long time; it wasn’t something they did all at once and then issued a “we hear you”. They are legitimately scared of losing their market dominance right now.
I’ll reserve judgment on Microsoft’s motives until I see them take even a single action, not statement, in a positive direction. Right now, they seem to just be putting a fake moustache on Copilot, calling it something else, and then claiming they’re rolling back frivolous Copilot integrations.