Those days Linux was not a viable options for consumers.
Microsoft was not in this alone (piracy in eastern part of the world), even companies like Adobe was in same situation and Adobe perhaps was more affected as they were smaller and less diversified.
But for them piracy in China, India, Romania et al. was not a problem, as they knew it increases user base and they can monetize that in corporates. The same people who pirate at home and school will pay for the license when they are in office (bigger ones).
Piracy was a training and demand generation channel.
> even companies like Adobe was in same situation and Adobe perhaps was more affected as they were smaller and less diversified.
Adobe didn't care about piracy for a long time. Up until CS4 a simple keygen was sufficient, up until CS6 you'd need to null-route a couple Adobe hosts in your /etc/hosts.
The result was that lots of young students grew up with Adobe tooling - Photoshop, Premiere, Dreamweaver, Flash - and virtually set the standard for the media industry once they entered the work force.
Microsoft was not in this alone (piracy in eastern part of the world), even companies like Adobe was in same situation and Adobe perhaps was more affected as they were smaller and less diversified.
But for them piracy in China, India, Romania et al. was not a problem, as they knew it increases user base and they can monetize that in corporates. The same people who pirate at home and school will pay for the license when they are in office (bigger ones).
Piracy was a training and demand generation channel.