This seems to be their strategy but it could backfire. Once Windows developers and enterprises start using Linux and other clouds instead of Windows Server and Azure, we might see the old MS again.
Azure is twice the price of Google for compute (VM). Azure was really a PaaS and it still shows. They really hope you bring you in on using their software, not just the VM aspect. I'm not overly convinced, but it is probably a decent strategy. Some folks will say "hey I need a message queue" and use Azure's instead of hosting in a VM. Lock in. Azure is even doing this for stuff like Redis, I suppose to get more people on the idea of using hosted software vs machines. In fact their infrastructure offerings are pretty weak (like SSD, or networking).
