So, total rumor, but I've heard from a few sources on the grapevine that one of the reasons for their antitrust spat with the DoJ was actually as a proxy battle, and the main thing the DoJ cared about was Microsoft's unwillingness to play ball wrt data collection and "lawful intercept".

The sense I've gotten is that Microsoft of the time really did have a very libertarian core thought process that wasn't really into spying on it's users.

Yes. That is indeed a total rumour.

> The sense I've gotten is that Microsoft of the time really did have a very libertarian core thought process that wasn't really into spying on it's users.

I think this sense is mistaken. Microsoft has always been pretty hostile to users and not so keen on things like user rights. Their customers were (and still are) businesses.

The tech was there but there were much stronger objections to apps plucking random data from devices and send it to corporations for evaluations. And developers are as guilty here.

Yes, there can be benefits to diagnostics, but then you failed to acknowledge what this data collection is about.

Back then, they wanted to be selling a product, not turning users into the product.

wrong, the tech was there, but users' expectations weren't - it's a sad state of affairs really