Ask HN: Will Windows ever be free? Recent discussions on HN have included comments saying that Microsoft makes its money from cloud and subscriptions, and that Windows is not so important any more. Is this just garbage? And if not, might Windows be free one day? What would Microsoft gain from Windows being free? |
Most giant companies make most of their money by monopolizing (or oligapolizing) a particular market segment or vertical which means one or two product lines that generate massive amounts of cash for decades. MS: Windows and Office, Google: search, Apple: Phones and Laptops. etc.
The only way for MS to give up a large bulk of its income is if they find a way to make even more in some other fashion. Ex. Give out Windows for free and fill it with ads. That is not going to happen. It would literally be suicide. I can maybe see MS creating a windows subscription model similar to what they did with Office but... say you dont pay your sub for a given month then what? they´re gonna lock you out from your own PC? I don´t think the OS model for license is ever going to change but that´s my 2 cents.
Edit: Now that I think about it, perhaps if we get better bandwidth and less latency in our home connection MS could offer a form of windows on a small stick that you can run without having a HDD and all your local files are stored on Azure for instance in return for monthly payment and that version of Windows could be free of charge. But I don´t see that happening any time soon.