I think Microsoft is trying to earn more money by forcing upgrades to Windows 10 and then displaying ads on the start menu and other places.
It is the pot of frogs in water, they slowly turn up the heat so the frogs won't notice until it is too late.
If the forced Windows 10 upgrades were not an accident, it wasn't to make money. If anything it would be an attempt to save money and have fewer people on older operating systems that they need to support.
If there's a "grand conspiracy" afoot, it should be pretty transparent and obvious by now: Microsoft doesn't want people stuck on the same version of Windows for a decade again (XP).
And a more evil conspiracy, I cannot imagine.
:)
I think most of us wish we can keep our tech debt/maintenance relationships below a decade. (At least, those of us that are not yet dinosaurs like IBM.)
On my Windows 10 machine, the "recommendations" were enabled by default. And they sure look/behave like advertisements to me.