My grandfather managed to install win 11 without meaning to, and the result was kinda “all your things are exactly where you left them, except we just remodeled the entire house, changed all the appliances, removed half the doors, replaced some with windows, and installed an unusable pool in the bathroom. Oh and the fridge is in the bedroom behind the living room couch.”
Trying to explain why everything is different over the phone was real fun.
Microsoft is the one that forced manufacturers to add it, or they couldn’t advertise their keyboard as being “Designed for Windows 95”, as it is required for the shortcuts (e.g win + d shows the desktop). The “Menu” key was added at the same time so that the Win 95 UI could be navigated without a mouse.
Now they are going the same with the CoPilot key. And poorly - Windows keys send keycode 0x5B and 0x5C. Menu sends 0x5D.
The CoPilot key? Left Shift + Windows + F23, obviously.