You can't think of Microsoft, or any company, as a monolith or personify them. The question is not how Microsoft benefits from this but rather which executive benefits from this. Given that I believe Windows team is now grouped together with the Bing (and Edge) team, I think the reasons for these sorts of changes are obvious.
>>wvenab+(OP)
If you think it's so obvious, why don't you provide the answer? I don't think GP would have posted the question if it were obvious to them.
Whether you talk about Microsoft-the-firm or Microsoft-the-shareholders when asking about "what's in it for them": that's the same thing because it's a for-profit business, so that's an irrelevant thing to post as well.
>>lucb1e+FW
I think the point (which I agree with) is this doesn't benefit Microsoft at all. It benefits a VP by them being able to show some metric move from Q to Q, and get a fat bonus. They couldn't care less about the long term effect on Microsoft's PR / reputation (they'll likely skitter off after collecting a few of those bonuses either rest&vest with some D&I initiative, or move off to the next victim to suck from).