Why Microsoft Killed the Windows Start Button
 

I'm not sure if I'm buying this excuse or not but, since the classic and Metro versions are separated, how hard would it be to just put the damn thing back for people that want it? "We'd seen the trend in Windows 7," said Chaitanya Sareen, principal program manager at Microsoft, referring to the telemetry gathered by the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program. "When we evolved the taskbar we saw awesome adoption of pinning [applications] on the taskbar. We are seeing people pin like crazy. And so we saw the Start menu usage dramatically dropping, and that gave us an option. We're saying 'look, Start menu usage is dropping, what can we do about it? What can we do with the Start menu to revive it, to give it some new identity, give it some new power?'"

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2012/06/..._start_button/