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I think it's a bit late for that. Also, you have to consider the size of Microsoft relative to its ownership of OpenAI, future dilution, and how Microsoft itse

I think it's a bit late for that. Also, you have to consider the size of Microsoft relative to its ownership of OpenAI, future dilution, and how Microsoft itself will fare in the future. If, say, Microsoft is on a path towards decreasing relevance/marketshare/profitability, any gains from its stake in OpenAI may be offset by its diminishing fortunes.

salynchnew 1y ago
You're making the roundabout argument that MSFT/OpenAI will one day go the way of Yahoo/Alibaba, which is wild.
- pinnochio 1y ago
  I didn't make a prediction. I was pointing out factors to be aware of. Hence the use of "If, say" to denote a hypothetical. Some people's convictions and lack of reading comprehension skills are certainly wild.
dualityoftapirs 1y ago
Reminds me of how Yahoo had a valuation in the negative billions with their Alibaba holdings taken into account: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wall-street-says-yahoos-worth-less-than-nothing/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wall-street-says-yahoos-worth-l...
mr_toad 1y ago
> If, say, Microsoft is on a path towards decreasing relevance/marketshare/profitability That’s a big if. I see a lot of people in big enterprises who would never even consider anything other than Microsoft and Azure.
- no_wizard 1y ago
  C# and .NET have a bigger market share than what gets talked about in trendy circles
  - jtbaker 1y ago
    C#/.NET are nice. Azure/Microsoft Cloud not so nice. Idk, maybe I have some bias due to familiarity, but I find the GCP admin and tools to be so much more intuitive than the Azure (and AWS too, for that matter) counterparts.
    - jstummbillig 1y ago
      Oh dear lord, GCP could be the intuitive one?! I have not used anything else but, dear lord, that's shocking and not at all surprising at the same time.
      - arresin 1y ago
        Any speculation on why none of them can make a UI and UX that is not 100% completely shit and makes you feel miserable and stressed out? Couldn’t they just throw money at the problem? Or fire the criminals who designed it?
        xp84 1y ago
        All the cloud platforms do not care about UI/UX at all. Although GCP gets honorable mention for being pretty consistent and I have to admit not too bad. But anyway none of them care because it’s expected that 90% of the usage of the platform will be via a CLI or some abstraction (k8s, terraform, etc etc). So, they put minimum effort into UI quality, usefulness, consistency, appearance. That’s my understanding anyway
        jstummbillig 1y ago
        a) Design is super hard when your product MUST do a lot (and GCP definitely has to do a lot) b) You design for the audience. The complexity that person-who-would-ever-use-GCP will deal with is far beyond what the average internet user would ever endure.
      - biglyburrito 1y ago
        Yeah, agreed. I love C# & the .NET platform; I do not feel the same way about Azure. It’s still way better than GCP, though.
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  The big question is if we are finally in a moment when big enterprises will be allowed to fail due to the infinite number of bad choices they make. Because things are going to change soon. What nobody know is what things exactly, and in what direction.
- notepad0x90 1y ago
  yeah, this is a take I see by people who work in unix like environments (including macs). If anything Microsoft will grow much bigger. People are consolidating in Azure and away from GCP. easier to manage costs and integrate with their fleet. Windows workstations and servers are now "joined" to Azure instead, where they used to be joined to domain controller servers. Microsoft will soon enough stop supporting that older domain controller design (soon as in a decade).
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory) is definitely a huge enterprise Azure driver, and MS knows it.
    - semiquaver 1y ago
      And it’s crap.
      - ethbr1 1y ago
        Doesn't matter. It just needs to work well enough and Microsoft needs to be willing to use it as a point of leverage. Both of which seem to be true. Hell, I'm still amazed they got away with the Office-licenses-only-usable-on-Azure bullshit, but here we are.
      - notepad0x90 1y ago
        compared to what? it isn't amazing but it's alright in my experience. it works and it seems like it's designed to give lots of people job security and lots of revenue streams for Microsoft though.
whizzter 1y ago
Huh? Windows itself might have had it's heyday but MS is solidly at #2 for clouds only behind AWS with enterprise Windows shops that will be hard pressed to not use MS options if they go to the cloud (Google really has continued to fumble their cloud positions with their reputation for "killedbygoogle.com" nagging on everyones mind). The biggest real threat to MS position is the Trump administration pushing foreign customers away with stuff like shutting down the ICJ Microsoft accounts, but that'll hurt AWS and Google equally much (The winners of that will be Alibaba and other foregin providers that can't compete in full enterprise stacks today).
- ml-anon 1y ago
  Watch this week. Amazon cloud growth has been terrible (Google and Microsoft remains >30%). Amazon have basically no good offerings for AI which is where gcp is bringing to eat their lunch. Anthropic moving to TPU for inference is a big big signal.
  - eitally 1y ago
    100% this. The AWS of today is going to be the Hetzner or Digital Ocean of the future. They'll still have hyperscale, but will not be seen as innovating on first party products or a leader in the AI managed services industry. And frankly, they are currently doing a shit job of even this, because Oracle is in the same category and OCI has been eating everyone's lunch (for the past two years!).
    - stackskipton 1y ago
      Is OCI really eating everyone lunch? Sure, it's showing massive growth but that's because Oracle has been running around offering insane discounts. We were cloud shopping, and they came by as well with REALLY good discount. Luckily our CTO was massively afraid of what would happen after that discount ran out.

salynchnew 1y ago

You're making the roundabout argument that MSFT/OpenAI will one day go the way of Yahoo/Alibaba, which is wild.

pinnochio 1y ago
I didn't make a prediction. I was pointing out factors to be aware of. Hence the use of "If, say" to denote a hypothetical. Some people's convictions and lack of reading comprehension skills are certainly wild.

dualityoftapirs 1y ago

Reminds me of how Yahoo had a valuation in the negative billions with their Alibaba holdings taken into account: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wall-street-says-yahoos-worth-less-than-nothing/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wall-street-says-yahoos-worth-l...

mr_toad 1y ago

> If, say, Microsoft is on a path towards decreasing relevance/marketshare/profitability That’s a big if. I see a lot of people in big enterprises who would never even consider anything other than Microsoft and Azure.

no_wizard 1y ago
C# and .NET have a bigger market share than what gets talked about in trendy circles
- jtbaker 1y ago
  C#/.NET are nice. Azure/Microsoft Cloud not so nice. Idk, maybe I have some bias due to familiarity, but I find the GCP admin and tools to be so much more intuitive than the Azure (and AWS too, for that matter) counterparts.
  - jstummbillig 1y ago
    Oh dear lord, GCP could be the intuitive one?! I have not used anything else but, dear lord, that's shocking and not at all surprising at the same time.
    - arresin 1y ago
      Any speculation on why none of them can make a UI and UX that is not 100% completely shit and makes you feel miserable and stressed out? Couldn’t they just throw money at the problem? Or fire the criminals who designed it?
      - xp84 1y ago
        All the cloud platforms do not care about UI/UX at all. Although GCP gets honorable mention for being pretty consistent and I have to admit not too bad. But anyway none of them care because it’s expected that 90% of the usage of the platform will be via a CLI or some abstraction (k8s, terraform, etc etc). So, they put minimum effort into UI quality, usefulness, consistency, appearance. That’s my understanding anyway
      - jstummbillig 1y ago
        a) Design is super hard when your product MUST do a lot (and GCP definitely has to do a lot) b) You design for the audience. The complexity that person-who-would-ever-use-GCP will deal with is far beyond what the average internet user would ever endure.
    - biglyburrito 1y ago
      Yeah, agreed. I love C# & the .NET platform; I do not feel the same way about Azure. It’s still way better than GCP, though.
marcosdumay 1y ago
The big question is if we are finally in a moment when big enterprises will be allowed to fail due to the infinite number of bad choices they make. Because things are going to change soon. What nobody know is what things exactly, and in what direction.
notepad0x90 1y ago
yeah, this is a take I see by people who work in unix like environments (including macs). If anything Microsoft will grow much bigger. People are consolidating in Azure and away from GCP. easier to manage costs and integrate with their fleet. Windows workstations and servers are now "joined" to Azure instead, where they used to be joined to domain controller servers. Microsoft will soon enough stop supporting that older domain controller design (soon as in a decade).
- ethbr1 1y ago
  Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory) is definitely a huge enterprise Azure driver, and MS knows it.
  - semiquaver 1y ago
    And it’s crap.
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      Doesn't matter. It just needs to work well enough and Microsoft needs to be willing to use it as a point of leverage. Both of which seem to be true. Hell, I'm still amazed they got away with the Office-licenses-only-usable-on-Azure bullshit, but here we are.
    - notepad0x90 1y ago
      compared to what? it isn't amazing but it's alright in my experience. it works and it seems like it's designed to give lots of people job security and lots of revenue streams for Microsoft though.

whizzter 1y ago

Huh? Windows itself might have had it's heyday but MS is solidly at #2 for clouds only behind AWS with enterprise Windows shops that will be hard pressed to not use MS options if they go to the cloud (Google really has continued to fumble their cloud positions with their reputation for "killedbygoogle.com" nagging on everyones mind). The biggest real threat to MS position is the Trump administration pushing foreign customers away with stuff like shutting down the ICJ Microsoft accounts, but that'll hurt AWS and Google equally much (The winners of that will be Alibaba and other foregin providers that can't compete in full enterprise stacks today).

ml-anon 1y ago
Watch this week. Amazon cloud growth has been terrible (Google and Microsoft remains >30%). Amazon have basically no good offerings for AI which is where gcp is bringing to eat their lunch. Anthropic moving to TPU for inference is a big big signal.
- eitally 1y ago
  100% this. The AWS of today is going to be the Hetzner or Digital Ocean of the future. They'll still have hyperscale, but will not be seen as innovating on first party products or a leader in the AI managed services industry. And frankly, they are currently doing a shit job of even this, because Oracle is in the same category and OCI has been eating everyone's lunch (for the past two years!).
  - stackskipton 1y ago
    Is OCI really eating everyone lunch? Sure, it's showing massive growth but that's because Oracle has been running around offering insane discounts. We were cloud shopping, and they came by as well with REALLY good discount. Luckily our CTO was massively afraid of what would happen after that discount ran out.