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Microsoft has wasted their opportunity. When ChatGPT first came out, Satya and Microsoft were seen as visionaries for their wisdom in investing in Open AI. The

Microsoft has wasted their opportunity. When ChatGPT first came out, Satya and Microsoft were seen as visionaries for their wisdom in investing in Open AI. Then competitors caught up while Microsoft stood still. Their integration with ChatGPT produced poor results [1] reminding people of Tay [2]. Bing failed to capitalize on AI, while Proclarity showed what an AI-powered search engine should really look like. Copilot failed to live up to its promise. Then Claude.ai, Gemini 2.0 caught up with or exceeded ChatGPT, and Microsoft still doesn't have their own model. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-microsoft-chatgpt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-m... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)

spiderfarmer 1y ago
The biggest problem with Microsoft is their UX. From finding out where to actually use their products, to signing in, wading through modals, popups, terms and agreements, redirects that don’t work and links that point to nowhere. Along the way you’ll run into inconsistent, decades old UI elements and marketing pages that fully misunderstand why you’re there. It’s a big, unsolvable mess that will forever prevent them from competing with legacy-free, capable startups. They should delete all their public facing websites and start over.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- atonse 1y ago
  Bill Gates agreed with you 20 years ago :-) (this email never gets old) https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-bill-gates-e-mail-rant/ https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-bill-ga...
  - esafak 1y ago
    > When SeattlePI asked Bill Gates about this particular email last week, he chuckled. “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail… like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.” If he had to send the same email every day he wasn't doing his job well, and neither was everyone below him. Even a fraction of that list is too much.
  - siquick 1y ago
    That was epic. The type of email we all dread to receive at work. Can’t fault Bill for his detail though, most of those kind of emails are “website slow, make fast”.
  - phs318u 1y ago
    Thanks. That was a great read. Somehow missed that. Two points to make: 1. Not sure why osnews charactarised this as an "epic rant". I thought he was remarkably restrained in his tone given both his role and his (reasonable) expectations. 2. This to me shows just how hard it is for leaders at large companies to change the culture. At some point of scaling up, organisations stop being aligned to the vision of the leadership and become a seemingly autonomous entity. The craziness that Bill highlights in his email is clearly not a reflection of his vision, and in fact had materialised despite his clear wishes. When we think about how "easy" it would be for the executive of a large organisation to change it, those of us not experienced at this level have an unrealistic expectation. It's my belief that large organisations are almost impossible to "turn around" once they get big enough and develop enough momentum regarding cultural/behavioural norms. These norms survive staff changes at pretty much every level. Changing it requires a multi-year absolute commitment from the top down. Pretty rare in my experience.
  - ramirond 1y ago
    That email is a gem.
- tartoran 1y ago
  Their UX, their naming conventions from products to frameworks and services, pulled plugged on products, user hostility and so on are all pointing out the root of the problem is elsewhere. I think Microsoft is no longer reformable. It is a behemoth that will probably continue to coast along like a braindead gozilla zombie that just floats due to its sheer size.
  - AppleBananaPie 1y ago
    That's the feel I get too :/ Too many crazy presentations on 'data' that are calling the calling the sky purple and everyone just nods along, ok's and gives promos all around.
- Geezus_42 1y ago
  Those stupid dialogs that may you think they will help you solve an issue but actually just waste 5-10mins "scanning" just to link you to irrelevant webpages that sometimes don't exist.
- nisa 1y ago
  It's not only public facing websites - Azure is also pretty inconsistent and lately any offer to preview a new UI was a downgrade and I happily reverted back - it's like they have a mandatory font and whitespace randomizer for any product. Also while far from a power user I've hit glitches that caused support tickets and are avoidable with clearer UX. Copilot in Azure - if it works at all - has been pretty useless.
crowcroft 1y ago
Even with their failures Microsoft still has OpenAI over a barrel. Access to their IP, and 20% of revenue (not profit).
- echelon 1y ago
  Firing the antitrust cannon can deal with that. Altman will absolutely attempt this.
  - crowcroft 1y ago
    Would love to see how that plays out. It’s a pretty absurd situation to eagerly sign the deal and take the funding and then when better deals start showing up turn around and try blow it up.
  - _2d30 1y ago
    Can you give a simple description of what the antitrust case would be?
    - crowcroft 1y ago
      I think the complaint would be two things, however IANAL 1. Lack of access to compute resource. Microsoft intentionally slowing OpenAI's ability to scale up and grow dominant quickly vs. Copilot, a competing product. Microsoft shouldn't be able to use it's dominance in the cloud compute market to unfairly influence the market for consumer AI. 2. Microsoft should not automatically gain OpenAIs IP in domains outside of the AI offerings that the company was supplying when the initial agreement was made. If it must be upheld the terms of the contract mean Microsoft get all of OpenAIs IP, then it block OpenAI from competing in other markets eg. Windsurf vs. VS Code.
dyauspitr 1y ago
How have they failed? They still get 49% of openAI’s profits so if openAI wins, Microsoft wins.
- flowerlad 1y ago
  That can be considered victory only if Microsoft is an investment firm as opposed to a software company.
  - mangamadaiyan 1y ago
    Aren't they actually an investment firm with a passing interest in software?
    - flowerlad 1y ago
      Fair point
    - gneuron 1y ago
      They're like the Merck of the pharma world.
    - prng2021 1y ago
      Maybe you should actually read one of their earnings reports. They don’t make $250B in annual revenue because of a “passing interest in software”.
      - flowerlad 1y ago
        You’re contradicting yourself with that statement. Microsoft is seen as a mercenary… yes they make a lot of money, that’s proof they’re a mercenary. If you want to prove they are not then point to software categories they invented, not how much money they are making.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > That can be considered victory only if Microsoft is an investment firm as opposed to a software company. An investment vehicle would be more accurate, but that's the primary function of every broadly-held publicly-traded firm.
vbezhenar 1y ago
I'll add, that Google search AI integration is quite good. I'm actually amazed how well it works, given the scale of Google Search. Nowadays I don't click search results in 50% of searches, because Google AI outputs response good enough for me.
- asciimov 1y ago
  Maybe we have a different Google AI down here in south Texas, but the Google search AI results I receive are laughably bad. It has made up tags for cli functions, suggested nonexistent functions with usage instructions, it’s given me operations in the wrong order, and my personal favorite it gave me a code example in the wrong language (think replying Visual Basic for C).
  - cpncrunch 1y ago
    Its about half and half. Really depends on whether there are good results that gemini can summarize. If not, it gets creative. Chatgpt is generally much better.
    - echelon 1y ago
      ChatGPT is better, but Google owns all of the panes of glass (for now). We've never seen a "Dog Pile vs Yahoo" battle when the giants are of this scale. It'll be interesting to see if Google can catch up with ChatGPT (seems likely) and if they simply win by default because they're in all of the places (also seems likely). It'd be pretty wild for ChatGPT to win, honestly.
      - reilly3000 1y ago
        People are forming deep personal attachments to it. They think all their chat history is in context and Act as if it knows them personally and has formed an opinion about them. They are replacing social interaction with it. I doubt someone in that deep would want to switch to something new very easily.
Spooky23 1y ago
The problem is that they made huge time consuming investments in technology to make copilot work with the various O365 controls, then confused everyone by slathering copilot on everything.
Barbing 1y ago
Wonder why they’re going so slowly… (& small typo, “Proclarity” = *Perplexity)
- breadwinner 1y ago
  Thank you. I did mean Perplexity... and it is not a very memorable name.
sunaookami 1y ago
Microsoft hired the infamous guy from Inflection AI and fired the one responsible for Bing Chat which was actually good and it's all downhill from there. Bing Chat actually made Google nervous!
- anaxag0ras 1y ago
  I still remember "You have been a bad user, I have been a good Bing". It was refreshing to see a chat with some personality at the time.
HexPhantom 1y ago
The lack of a true first-party model is glaring now that everyone else is racing ahead with their own stacks
jamil7 1y ago
Probably but it might not matter. They don't really need to compete on quality, just the simplicity of selling a suite that's bundled together to enterprise in the same way they did with Teams which is inferior to Slack in pretty much everyway (last time I had to use it anyway). Isn't their advantage always sales and distribution? Maybe its different this time, I don't know.

spiderfarmer 1y ago

The biggest problem with Microsoft is their UX. From finding out where to actually use their products, to signing in, wading through modals, popups, terms and agreements, redirects that don’t work and links that point to nowhere. Along the way you’ll run into inconsistent, decades old UI elements and marketing pages that fully misunderstand why you’re there. It’s a big, unsolvable mess that will forever prevent them from competing with legacy-free, capable startups. They should delete all their public facing websites and start over.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
atonse 1y ago
Bill Gates agreed with you 20 years ago :-) (this email never gets old) https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-bill-gates-e-mail-rant/ https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-bill-ga...
- esafak 1y ago
  > When SeattlePI asked Bill Gates about this particular email last week, he chuckled. “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail… like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.” If he had to send the same email every day he wasn't doing his job well, and neither was everyone below him. Even a fraction of that list is too much.
- siquick 1y ago
  That was epic. The type of email we all dread to receive at work. Can’t fault Bill for his detail though, most of those kind of emails are “website slow, make fast”.
- phs318u 1y ago
  Thanks. That was a great read. Somehow missed that. Two points to make: 1. Not sure why osnews charactarised this as an "epic rant". I thought he was remarkably restrained in his tone given both his role and his (reasonable) expectations. 2. This to me shows just how hard it is for leaders at large companies to change the culture. At some point of scaling up, organisations stop being aligned to the vision of the leadership and become a seemingly autonomous entity. The craziness that Bill highlights in his email is clearly not a reflection of his vision, and in fact had materialised despite his clear wishes. When we think about how "easy" it would be for the executive of a large organisation to change it, those of us not experienced at this level have an unrealistic expectation. It's my belief that large organisations are almost impossible to "turn around" once they get big enough and develop enough momentum regarding cultural/behavioural norms. These norms survive staff changes at pretty much every level. Changing it requires a multi-year absolute commitment from the top down. Pretty rare in my experience.
- ramirond 1y ago
  That email is a gem.
tartoran 1y ago
Their UX, their naming conventions from products to frameworks and services, pulled plugged on products, user hostility and so on are all pointing out the root of the problem is elsewhere. I think Microsoft is no longer reformable. It is a behemoth that will probably continue to coast along like a braindead gozilla zombie that just floats due to its sheer size.
- AppleBananaPie 1y ago
  That's the feel I get too :/ Too many crazy presentations on 'data' that are calling the calling the sky purple and everyone just nods along, ok's and gives promos all around.
Geezus_42 1y ago
Those stupid dialogs that may you think they will help you solve an issue but actually just waste 5-10mins "scanning" just to link you to irrelevant webpages that sometimes don't exist.
nisa 1y ago
It's not only public facing websites - Azure is also pretty inconsistent and lately any offer to preview a new UI was a downgrade and I happily reverted back - it's like they have a mandatory font and whitespace randomizer for any product. Also while far from a power user I've hit glitches that caused support tickets and are avoidable with clearer UX. Copilot in Azure - if it works at all - has been pretty useless.

crowcroft 1y ago

Even with their failures Microsoft still has OpenAI over a barrel. Access to their IP, and 20% of revenue (not profit).

echelon 1y ago
Firing the antitrust cannon can deal with that. Altman will absolutely attempt this.
- crowcroft 1y ago
  Would love to see how that plays out. It’s a pretty absurd situation to eagerly sign the deal and take the funding and then when better deals start showing up turn around and try blow it up.
- _2d30 1y ago
  Can you give a simple description of what the antitrust case would be?
  - crowcroft 1y ago
    I think the complaint would be two things, however IANAL 1. Lack of access to compute resource. Microsoft intentionally slowing OpenAI's ability to scale up and grow dominant quickly vs. Copilot, a competing product. Microsoft shouldn't be able to use it's dominance in the cloud compute market to unfairly influence the market for consumer AI. 2. Microsoft should not automatically gain OpenAIs IP in domains outside of the AI offerings that the company was supplying when the initial agreement was made. If it must be upheld the terms of the contract mean Microsoft get all of OpenAIs IP, then it block OpenAI from competing in other markets eg. Windsurf vs. VS Code.

dyauspitr 1y ago

How have they failed? They still get 49% of openAI’s profits so if openAI wins, Microsoft wins.

flowerlad 1y ago
That can be considered victory only if Microsoft is an investment firm as opposed to a software company.
- mangamadaiyan 1y ago
  Aren't they actually an investment firm with a passing interest in software?
  - flowerlad 1y ago
    Fair point
  - gneuron 1y ago
    They're like the Merck of the pharma world.
  - prng2021 1y ago
    Maybe you should actually read one of their earnings reports. They don’t make $250B in annual revenue because of a “passing interest in software”.
    - flowerlad 1y ago
      You’re contradicting yourself with that statement. Microsoft is seen as a mercenary… yes they make a lot of money, that’s proof they’re a mercenary. If you want to prove they are not then point to software categories they invented, not how much money they are making.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > That can be considered victory only if Microsoft is an investment firm as opposed to a software company. An investment vehicle would be more accurate, but that's the primary function of every broadly-held publicly-traded firm.

vbezhenar 1y ago

I'll add, that Google search AI integration is quite good. I'm actually amazed how well it works, given the scale of Google Search. Nowadays I don't click search results in 50% of searches, because Google AI outputs response good enough for me.

asciimov 1y ago
Maybe we have a different Google AI down here in south Texas, but the Google search AI results I receive are laughably bad. It has made up tags for cli functions, suggested nonexistent functions with usage instructions, it’s given me operations in the wrong order, and my personal favorite it gave me a code example in the wrong language (think replying Visual Basic for C).
- cpncrunch 1y ago
  Its about half and half. Really depends on whether there are good results that gemini can summarize. If not, it gets creative. Chatgpt is generally much better.
  - echelon 1y ago
    ChatGPT is better, but Google owns all of the panes of glass (for now). We've never seen a "Dog Pile vs Yahoo" battle when the giants are of this scale. It'll be interesting to see if Google can catch up with ChatGPT (seems likely) and if they simply win by default because they're in all of the places (also seems likely). It'd be pretty wild for ChatGPT to win, honestly.
    - reilly3000 1y ago
      People are forming deep personal attachments to it. They think all their chat history is in context and Act as if it knows them personally and has formed an opinion about them. They are replacing social interaction with it. I doubt someone in that deep would want to switch to something new very easily.

Spooky23 1y ago

The problem is that they made huge time consuming investments in technology to make copilot work with the various O365 controls, then confused everyone by slathering copilot on everything.

Barbing 1y ago

Wonder why they’re going so slowly… (& small typo, “Proclarity” = *Perplexity)

breadwinner 1y ago
Thank you. I did mean Perplexity... and it is not a very memorable name.

sunaookami 1y ago

Microsoft hired the infamous guy from Inflection AI and fired the one responsible for Bing Chat which was actually good and it's all downhill from there. Bing Chat actually made Google nervous!

anaxag0ras 1y ago
I still remember "You have been a bad user, I have been a good Bing". It was refreshing to see a chat with some personality at the time.

HexPhantom 1y ago

The lack of a true first-party model is glaring now that everyone else is racing ahead with their own stacks

jamil7 1y ago

Probably but it might not matter. They don't really need to compete on quality, just the simplicity of selling a suite that's bundled together to enterprise in the same way they did with Teams which is inferior to Slack in pretty much everyway (last time I had to use it anyway). Isn't their advantage always sales and distribution? Maybe its different this time, I don't know.