Why does PING.EXE itself connect to the network?

Question

Windows

Good evening.
For the second day in a row, my firewall warns me that the PING.EXE file is trying to connect via ICMPv4 protocol (Echo request) to the address 51.141.32.51. Never seen this before.
This ip address belongs, apparently, to Microsoft.
But I still don't understand why ping.exe tries to connect to their servers and why it does it, and also why it didn't do it before (the system has been installed for about a year). In general, this is my questions to you.
PS - Win7 x64, the ping.exe file itself is definitely genuine, I checked the hash amount and so on.

Answer 1

With 99% probability, some software uses it, maybe even the firewall itself or antivirus or browser or system or game. It is necessary to watch the monitoring program, who starts the ping and it will be clear.
51.141.32.51 - really petty, maybe they just check if there is an Internet or not.

Answer 2

M$ uses such scheme for example for check of availability of a tyrnet - kicks the servers. If there is no ping, it draws a yellow triangle on the network connection icon.