Microsoft is testing a project codenamed “Bali” that lets users “visualize, manage, control, share, and monetize” data that the company collects about them
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet :
Context & Ripple Effects
ZDNet's report on codename "Bali" lands mid-arc for Microsoft's data-governance work: on the enterprise side it already ships classification and labeling through Azure Information Protection, and Bali extends the same manage-and-control framing to the data Microsoft itself collects about consumers. The notable addition is "monetize" — control tools had existed before, but a monetization hook implies users could eventually transact with their own data.
First-order effects
- Consumers get a single surface to visualize and manage what Microsoft has collected about them, shifting data control from scattered settings pages into one dashboard.
- Microsoft gains an early-mover compliance and trust asset: a user-facing control layer built ahead of tightening privacy expectations rather than retrofitted after them.
Second-order effects
- Rivals holding large consumer data footprints face pressure to match a visualize-and-control dashboard — and harder questions if they skip the monetization piece entirely.
- If sharing and monetization ship, Microsoft becomes a potential intermediary for personal-data exchange, inserting its identity and Azure stack between users and anyone who wants their data.
Third-order effects
- Bali reads as groundwork for what Microsoft later formalized as its Data Dignity initiative exploring whether users could buy and sell their own data — a structural move from data as something collected about people to data as an asset they hold.
- If the pattern holds across the industry, personal-data dashboards become table stakes and the competitive question shifts from who collects data to who offers the cleanest permission boundary and settlement layer for it.
The trend: Consumer platforms are evolving from opaque data collection toward user-facing control layers — and, tentatively, marketplaces where individuals can share or monetize the data held about them.