But the direction are the opposite:

1. Canonical makes no money.

2. They introduce a "bad" feature to try to make money.

3. Users outrage so canonical makes it easy to cancel.

4. Users are still not happy so Canonical turns it off by default.

vs

1. Microsoft makes s*loads of money from various sources.

2. They show an annoying popup urging users to upgrade to W10 (to make more money? to reduce support?).

3. They start forcing it by "closing is accepting".

4. They just start forcing it (according to many reports) so the users start creating tools to stop it.

The difference is that the users of Windows have no choice. Microsoft takes advantage of the situation. Canonical has no such advantage, but they surely would like to, according to this precedent.

That is too weak a precedent to be making a strong accusation like this.

It was one misstep. They have done, and continue to do, a lot of things right.