The negative reaction to this kind of thing baffles me. I see it as a neat new feature that'll make my life easier. But if for whatever reason you don't like it... don't use it. No biggie.
Yeah, it's not like Microsoft's style to force or nag their users into using whatever product. Nobody ever had any trouble turning off Onedrive, or uninstalling Edge.
Just this morning I was noodling through my start menu, as you do, and on a lark I right clicked and uninstalled Cortana. (This is on Windows 10.) Windows has never allowed me to do that before. You could disable it, you could hide it, but you could not uninstall it. The option just was not there. Some update somewhere along the line enabled an actual uninstall and I don't know which one.
Immediately I had a hunch they were planning to replace it with some new bullshit. That's the only reason Microsoft would ever let it go.
There are many things on Windows people don't like: Preinstalled bloatware, Edge, Microsoft spyware. As you simply cannot disable them under Windows, the only way not to use them is to upgrade to Linux, it seems.
If it follows the same pattern for all MS features, there will be a check box to turn it off, but it will be on by default. So if you don't like it, turn it off and save your outrage, like me, for the absence of a vertical taskbar in Windows 11.