Summary: Microsoft wants everybody to come closer so that everybody can be crushed; the tactics are largely the same

THE goals of Microsoft are still the same (world domination by destruction of anything resembling competition). The methods are largely the same, but their public-facing slant is "love" and "service" (as if Microsoft is some charity or a public service). Strategies have barely changed at all, except at some cosmetic level. Even Microsoft itself occasionally admits it (truth slipping out of the horse's own mouth).

"Android, as people generally know (geeks anyway), has Linux in it. Every single Android device is also a "Linux device" (albeit not GNU and there's no "freedom" about it, no "libre" to it)."Microsoft is not an underdog; in the area of desktops/laptops it's still dominating the market, albeit on the client side in general (including phones/tablets) its market share is somewhere between 30% and 40%. It's decreasing over time and Microsoft panics over GNU/Linux gains, hence the attacks on it (WSL2 is an attack on GNU/Linux, not support for it).

Android, as people generally know (geeks anyway), has Linux in it. Every single Android device is also a "Linux device" (albeit not GNU and there's no "freedom" about it, no "libre" to it). Android Authority now says that "Microsoft slips Bing search into Android through Outlook" and in its own words: (more here)

If you use Outlook for your Android phone’s email and calendars, you might see an unexpected sales pitch for Microsoft’s search engine.

Android users have discovered that Outlook slips a “Bing search” option into the long-press menu you see when you select text. Tap it and it will open your default browser with a Bing query for whatever words you had selected.

Bundling of this kind may have been done by Google as well, but just because Google does something doesn't make it OK, either. Bing's market share is, according to some survey, somewhere around 2%. Yes, measly 2% and constantly declining. Remember that MSIE also started at 0% when it competed against Netscape and illegal tactics brought Netscape down to 0%.

"Microsoft has not actually changed; except for the worse..."These sorts of tactics will become prevalent also in Visual Studio, GitHub and other tools by which Microsoft hopes to regain monopoly over ordinary users and developers. In the latest Daily Links we included this article in which Microsoft Tim reminded us -- once again -- that WSL and WSL2 are an attack on GNU/Linux (the EEE way). Bundling both horizontally and vertically isn't a novel tactic; it's often illegal, but Microsoft bribes officials to cause regulators to only enforce the law against Google. Bill Gates often disguises such bribery as 'charity'.

Microsoft has not actually changed; except for the worse... ⬆