Do we like Microsoft?
Software, cloud (Azure), AI, Windows, Xbox and LinkedIn; based in Redmond, Washington, USA
Our score: 6 out of 10. A hugely useful company with real climate and safety talk, but fresh privacy fines, antitrust scrutiny, rising emissions and the Israel cloud row keep us at a cautious maybe.
Microsoft is the Redmond giant behind Windows, Office, Azure, LinkedIn and Xbox. Satya Nadella has been CEO since 2014 and chairman since 2021, with Brad Smith as vice chair and president. It's a listed company, so it answers to shareholders rather than one owner.
The latest dust-up is privacy. On 12 October 2026 Norway's data protection authority fined Microsoft's ad arm Xandr 92 million kroner (about €8.6m) over Grindr users' data. The authority said it was the biggest fine it has issued and called the breaches very serious. It said Xandr never checked that consent was valid.
The Israel story is the biggest ethical row. The Guardian and partners reported that an Israeli military unit stored huge numbers of Palestinian phone calls on Azure. Microsoft's own review found evidence backing parts of that. It then disabled some services to the unit, though employee group No Azure for Apartheid said that was only a small subset.
On climate, Microsoft promised to be carbon negative by 2030. But its emissions rose 25% in fiscal 2025 as AI data centres grew, and it stopped using unbundled renewable credits. Carbon removal buying through mid-July 2026 was reportedly down about 80% on the year before. It says the goal still stands.
Our score is a cautious six. It does some things well and has real money behind its pledges. But the fines, the FTC probe into cloud bundling and Copilot, and the surveillance row mean we'd back it with open eyes, not blind faith.