The company has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, brought by several governments and by other companies, for unlawful monopolistic practices. In 2004, the European Union found Microsoft guilty in the Microsoft Corp. v. Commission case, and it received an 899 million euro fine.

Historically, people hated Microsoft because: They exploited its Windows monopoly to charge high prices and limit competition. They made low quality software. There was an internal saying “Shipping is a feature”, meaning, just get the same thing out the door.

Microsoft does not steal your data, or anyone else's. What they DO gather is called “meta-data”. It's data about data, not the data itself. And they use that information to improve their products, of fix bugs or security breaches, to stop malware or prevent future exploits by black-hat hackers.