this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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To anyone downvoting the comment above, you can use windows indefinitely without a key. The only thing that happens is you get some text on the screen (that sometimes goes away for no reason) and you can't change the background. They don't give two f's. They could easily block keys / stop them from working if misused, but they don't care. Same reason why every laptop comes with a license. They put it there because it costs them nothing. They'd rather have market share, than get money upfront. They probably make bank on other things (i.e. the analytics, ads, etc)
Been like that since the 90s really. Microsoft's "secret sauce" is that they never gave a shit about the end users.
They make bank by courting enterprise users: Big companies with hundreds of employees, OEMs, governments, schools, etc.
In recent times they found a way to double-dip by putting in telemetry/data collection/ads/adware -- But before that they just didn't care.
It does help that windows makes the user develop learned helplessness and so by the time they are getting their own computer, they'll want to stay in the windows environment. So they also get the inflated marketshare, which feeds back into their pitch when they are courting those enterprises.