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> Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data, which everybody hates.

Microsoft has many business models and one of them is based on advertisements, example : LinkedIn.

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> Microsoft has many business models and one of them is based on advertisements, example : LinkedIn.

LinkedIn make bank from selling Sales Navigator. Ads are a tiny proportion of their revenue.

I was surprised to see this is true about their advertising! While dated, their 2016 disclosures showed ads making up only 18% of revenue ($109mm)[1]. Which was only about 10% of the $1.6bn that Bing pulled in around that time[2].

Having managed ad campaigns on LinkedIn, that's both surprising and not. They have a horrifically high cost per click compared to other channels, but the results in B2B verticals were usually enough to warrant putting up with it. So it's surprising it was only pulling in around $100mm. But then, their self-service component didn't allow for accessing all of their inventory, and none of my clients wanted to go in with the commitments necessary for the high-touch placements. So that may have dampened demand a good bit.

That said, Sales Navigator (and premium subscriptions) is an equally small portion of revenue. 65% of their money came from their "talent solutions" recruiting features.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120214/how-does-lin...

[2] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/313837/micros...

Yes, it is always a reality check from the feel good vscode/wsl/Nadella lovefest when they foist some unwanted telemetry or ads in various parts of Windows, that they are a beast with many heads.

Sure, but Microsoft is not exactly looking to brag about the fact that it owns LinkedIn. There's zero mention of Microsoft on the LinkedIn website.

My hunch is that LinkedIn derives a substantial (perhaps the majority) of revenue from premium memberships sold to recruiters.

The recruiters and amount of spam (those two overlap heavily in the Venn diagram) are what drove me to delete my LinkedIn account.

Bing is their major ad business, not Linkedin which makes its money mostly from subscriptions and jobs.

Windows 10 business model for consumers is also based on ads and tracking/surveillance.