That's fair, I should reframe. The incentive given to decision makers at Microsoft is company stock. That means the primary focus for everyone who makes decisions at Microsoft is the stock price, which in turn means the stock price is the primary product for the company itself.

A company does need to keep its market cap above that of its assets, if it wants to avoid a hostile takeover and sell-off of those assets.

Name a major U.S. public company in recent years that has consistently prioritized improving its product over boosting short term stock price or extracting maximum profits. If capitalism were truly a healthy system about building strong products to create healthy markets, this should be the norm (and enshitification shunned), not the exception.

What we actually see is a system of chartered extraction. Corporate executives are like Norman lords, granted their 'title' (CEO of instead of Earl of) by shareholders (rather than a king) in return for which both are/were expected to extract maximum value by any means necessary. Extractive tactics often at the expense of long-term product strength are behaviors shareholders expect if the CEO is to keep their bestowed 'title'.

Don't forget the progenitor joint stock company The East India Company, Capitalism in it's purest form without government restriction. Profit-maximizing, absentee extraction, with company executives serving as quasi-feudal lords over assets and people. Modern corporate capitalism is hard to distinguish, in its structure,history, behavior, and incentives, from the Norman extraction system, it's just dressed in a more politically palatable wrapper and forced to mellow out from it's desired East India Company style final form.