It wouldn't surprise me if it was born during a Zoom call during the middle of the pandemic, after some marketing manager in marketing read an article about Chromebooks gaining market share.
I noticed that MSFT is pushing that cur-down browser-focused OS crap again.
But if I wanted a Chromebook, I'd get a bloody Chromebook!
My father, the retired technician, would immediately go into the settings and start making changes even though he didn't understand what he was doing and would forget what he had done. I got tired of guessing.
I was amazed that I couldn't find software to lock him out of making changes. I tried a few, but like a teenager, he found ways around them. So I sat down and with a long list locked him out of installing software, remote access, settings, etc. It took a long time, but I nailed down about 95% the first time, then swept up the last bits later.
My work, a hospital, spent an entire week trying to purge the bs from a new windows 11 build. Just for a base for new machine roll outs. Whole time, I was make sarcastic little comments about how they backed the wrong horse and needed to switch to Linux.
It's a shame the hospital didn't go for Win10 LTSC (supported until 2027 or 2032 if using the IoT version). It's meant for exactly these type of enterprise situations. It's literally a debloated Windows and the updates are only security updates. No bloat/cortana/etc, it feels like running Windows 7 again (in a good way).
Disclaimer: I use Linux Mint as my daily driver but Win10 LTSC if I must use Windows.
Windows is just a vehicle for developers to create services on Azure and to push consumers to O365. We have to endure enough advertising in our life already - an OS should be a tool to get work done and not another vector to push ads to the consumer.
I put Fedora on our daughter's laptop and it's refreshingly boring.