Well at least there is no clear conflict of interest /s

Especially if it might hurt their income.

I don’t know anything about quantum computing, but recently I heard a long talk by a quantum-computing expert who were trying to convince us to work on quantum error correction. His (probably optimistic) estimate is that: with a good amount of help on error correction, we might achieve 100 logical qbit in 5 to 10 years.

Completely unpredicted breakthrough is rare in computer science; if Microsoft’s tech can actually solve quantum computing (as you discribed), it would have made much much bigger wave than this.