Hypothetical? Every major ebook platform offers annotations (and I just checked — this platform did too). MS apparently recognizes the additional inconvenience to people who have annotated, as they are offering an extra $25 to anyone who has made annotations. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497396
I agree that this closure is not world-ending, and I think the point of the article is that if MS can do this to your ebooks, then other big tech companies could do it to your other content too.
Your thoughts? Deeply engaging with a book, particularly a non-fiction one, involves more than just bouncing words off your retinas.
Personally, while I might not expend the effort on some random novel (though I do highlight quotes I find particularly insightful or funny), I do make a lot of in-line notes & highlights on non-fiction books, both paper and digital. I'd be really pissed off if a book I studied disappeared with all annotations. That's why I learned to procure PDFs of e-books I care about, and I recently started to maintain a separate folder with "reading notes", into which I retype my annotations and thoughts on them after I'm done with reading (this means essentially re-reading the book, albeit much faster, as I have annotations to guide me to important thoughts).
I agree that this closure is not world-ending, and I think the point of the article is that if MS can do this to your ebooks, then other big tech companies could do it to your other content too.