Could they do it? Deactivate Windows licenses, block Cloud services, access to Office 365 and whatnot?
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
Yes but not legally. They are also legally bound to EU laws, which would protect the clients that bpught the software. But! Just like plenty of companies pulled out of Russia, if the US does not care and decides ro enable this behavior then they could do it without too much trouble.
But I doubt this would happen, the EU is a big part of their income, and money is what they care about.
Haven’t used a Microsoft product at home in years, at work though is a very different story. Everything is Microsoft and its horrible and frustrating.
- They can deactivate cloud services likely on a press of a button, for all EU IP addresses.
- If there’s a killswitch in Windows, yes. Otherwise they can still selectively put out an update that would lock up your PC and disable it from functioning, possibly even wiping any and all drives in the PC completely clean.
The likelihood of this scenario is small outside of either the USA invading Europe, or Trump giving the EU to Russia or other powers, while Trump promising MS no taxes and regulations for a given period.
Its has already turned off all mainline windows but the worst one so.
It hasn’t, though. They just ended support for older versions of Windows. You can still use those versions. The question being asked is if they can actually stop you from using Windows, to which the answer is most likely no.
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It would be the biggest self-own in history but apparently the yanks are into that these days.
That, yes, and maybe Microsoft wouldn’t be the one pulling the trigger? I mean, with prism the NSA had access to most internet traffic between the US and the rest of the world, I think. Who knows what mechanisms there are in place, and what this government might decide to do?
Is that a promise?
Microsoft has the ability to do this if they really wanted to. It would completely destroy their business if they did, though, so they won’t. I mean, who would keep using Microsoft products if the company was willing to just take it away from you at a moment’s notice?
The US government cannot do it so easily. They’d have to order Microsoft to do so. Microsoft would resist and take it to court. The US Court system makes a LOT of really fucked up rulings, but the one thing they do reliably is side with big business. I’m inclined to think that in this hypothetical showdown, the courts would side with Microsoft.
I mean… If you take the leaks by Snowden (iirc?) seriously, there’s a good possibility the CIA or other intelligence agencies have backdoors in everything.
Not like loads of militaries care.
They either use Linux (probably not BSD (or maybe they do?!) or outdated af Windows NT/XP/embedded 7/Server versions.
I’d honestly not expect them to at least use Windows 10 IoT or an embedded modern version.I mean our banks still used Windows 7 or Server 2012 for their ATMs.
And they are network connected lolI’m sure that if a government has information that’s so sensitive they’ll store it on servers that run some sort of proprietary OS, or maybe not digitally at all.
Isn’t it even part of US law? And why big organization request their data to be hosted in their country?.
I thought this was far more than just Snowden
Microsoft is an Eldritch hydra monstrosity. I think it has become its own civilization. I think it’s so large that it just exists as a self sustaining chaos phenomena. I don’t think the organization can make a decision. One department of thousands makes a decision. And they all jostle about breaking each other’s shit every other day.
Yes, IIRC they already did this for Russia.
Can we ask them to turn off all the Xbox services and Activision-Blizzard games in russia as well? Overwatch should be illegal in there anyway because of the “gay propaganda”
Id like russians to start getting banned for the same shit english speaking people do. In english the word “ho” is censored and met with a warning, meanwhile russians can string together 20 slurs and an legitimate, non joke call for genocide and nothing happens. And if you point that out you get called a racist.
That would clear them out very quickly indeed. Most russians I’ve encountered on the internet are either quite ashamed of what their government is doing and try to blend in with the English speaking crowd, or are so loud and obnoxious you can’t possibly miss them.
Overwatch should be illegal in there anyway because of the “gay propaganda”
Good luck with that one. As long as Overwatch is free to play, they can just make new accounts with an EU VPN. No way to tie the account owner to their country of origin unless they fork over that info voluntarily, such as by having to make an online purchase.
I think they have to register a valid phone number to play ranked, unless that restriction got removed
Yes, technically they could cause massive disruptions. Not likely they will.
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They would not get paid.
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Europe would suddenly have a very good reason to spend billions of euro on funding competitors.
To expand on point 2, Europe is already home to two major competitors to Windows (one headquartered within the EU) as well as competitors in other fields, so they would also have an easier time (as a bloc) than many other places, who don’t have local competitors I nearly as good a position.
What are the competitors?
The two I was specifically thinking about are SuSE and Canonical. There’s also Collabora and Nextcloud in the productivity systems space and plenty of others.
LibreOffice, OpenOffice compete with the office suite. Google docs is American but is a big competition with the online variant of office.
Linux and to some extent BSD compete with windows. Munich, Germany had a project to switch away from windows in favor of Linux. Or got cancelled after some other guy got elected, I don’t know the details.
There are a dozen cloud storage competitors. But that is something Microsoft is not dominating the market at anyway.
The government won’t care about gaming but the public opinion would turn against the xbox and windows, which would cause Sony and Nintendo to celebrate.
Well Munich swiched back to Windows and a M$ dependence opened there short after, looks like deals where made.
But good news anyway Schleswig-Holstein, the state near Hamburg, decided to switch completely to Linux.
Windows is only a small part of the Ms online exosystem
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Maybe if we ask nicely.
Of course they could. One update could render the system worthless or come with malware that infests systems in the network.
Oh, so just another Patch Tuesday then.
Yep. The idea that microsoft can “do nothing” to a system that isn’t hosted on their servers is pure delusion - or ignorant. They haven’t thought more deeply about being evil, which is quite cute actually.
Sure, but they like money, so not happening.
