They leaned their strategy pretty hard into mining when that was on the table. They for sure chase trends and alienate their base. Any way to juice near term profits and they will. It’s working out for them right now, so surely it will forever.

The converse is that SEO spam has become better at the game than google, despite google’s best efforts. It’s a less comfortable thought because how could a bunch of unorganized distributed actors out compete the one of the world’s richest company at their bread and butter game. The alternative is that one of the world’s richest companies gave up playing their bread and butter game.

>see headline

“Oh cool. What fun and inventive thing is Microsoft doing?”

>reads first line of article

“Oh it’s for AI. Gross.”

The economics aren’t there. A cellular chip and a subscription will not pay for the private conversations of a random house.