Why Microsoft Has Stopped Fighting Software Piracy
For decades, the tech giant fought against pirated copies of its software.
Microsoft is one of the few enterprise companies that began decades ago and still remains one of the largest tech giants to this very day. Even with its many tech wars, it has survived the test of time where many of its peers have faltered.
However, one of its earliest tech wars that it still faces to this very day is against pirates. These software pirates have sold counterfeit copies of Microsoft products in the millions or uploaded the product on torrent sites.
How much has piracy cost Microsoft?
There isn’t an official number of how much piracy has cost Microsoft, but it is very safe to say it’s in the billions of dollars.
Instead of touting their own numbers (which would be a PR killer), Microsoft has adopted to educating the cost that pirated copies of software can cause to businesses and consumers. According to some older research done in 2014, Microsoft released a study done alongside research firm IDC and the National University of Singapore.
This report uncovered that consumers worldwide would spend $25 billion and waste around…
