"The Audimeter (audience meter) was used from 1950 during the early days of television broadcasting. It attached to a television and recorded the channels viewed, onto a 16mm film cartridge that was mailed weekly to company headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, and used to generate the Nielsen Television Index. It was based on an earlier Audimeter that had been developed for the 1942 Nielsen Radio Index. Randomly selected "Nielsen families" homes were enticed to accept the Audimeter by including free TV repair service provided by TV Index reps, which was a valuable commodity when vacuum tube televisions predominated." - Wikipedia
In other words, for TV they paid a small portion of the audience to record and report their habits.
Microsoft does ask. And it can easily adjust pricing up and then give you a discount for telemetry. But you won’t end up with more money as a result. So what did we achieve?
In other words, for TV they paid a small portion of the audience to record and report their habits.