I think the core business of MSFT has always been — building a platform, grab everyone in and seek rent. Bill figured out from 1975 so it has been super successful.

OS was that platform but in Azure it is just the lowest layer, so maybe management just doesn’t see it, as long as the platform works and government contracts keep coming in. Then you have a bunch of yes-man engineers (I’m so surprised that any principle engineer, who should be financially free, could push out plans described by the author in this series) who gives the management false hopes.