Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?

Corporations must generate growth to please their investors no matter what. If the CEO doesn't do it the board members will replace him with someone who will.

Microsoft cannot significantly generate growth by increasing their user base by making a more attractive product anymore. They have maxed out their share of the market. So they must pursue other ways to generate "growth", like data mining their customers to generate an additional source of income.

In this kind of situation you will see all sorts undesirable behaviors emerge from corporations like that, like lowering the quality of their products or cutting down on their workforce to "reduce cost" event though they are already turning a profit.

We will see this shit happen over and over again until we come up with a solution to this "infinite growth" problem.