5 ms·

Business basic goes from $6 to $7. Business premium is unchanged from $22 to $22. Price increases are normal. (I’ve been on HN long enough to remember when “ra

by Aurornis 11mo ago

Business basic goes from $6 to $7. Business premium is unchanged from $22 to $22. Price increases are normal. (I’ve been on HN long enough to remember when “raise your prices” was treated as the best startup advice around in HN comments) These price increases aren’t excessive relative to inflation for other services in a business context. I don’t see this as a dangerous game. > The new "features" they're justifying this with (Copilot) isn't even something that most people want Most people who comment on HN, maybe. Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as a competitor’s. The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News commenters doesn’t have much overlap.

bachmeier 11mo ago
> Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as a competitor’s. There's no substance to this comment. It's pure speculation. If you actually want to look at evidence, look at the recent news that Microsoft has cut AI sales targets in half. > The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News commenters doesn’t have much overlap. Ironic that you posted this as a comment on HN.
- Aurornis 11mo ago
  > Ironic that you posted this as a comment on HN. It’s not ironic at all. Posting here was deliberate to highlight the bubble that happens here for consumer products. This comment section has a lot of people evaluating these price hikes as if they were targeted at HN individual users, not for a product targeted at a different audiences and corporate subscriptions. Hacker News commenters are frequently unaware that their use cases and customer preferences do not reflect the average customer demand in the market. Remember when Dropbox was launched and the top comment was doubting its utility because they could replicate it with rsync and other commands duct taped together? That level of disconnectedness with the market is common in every thread about consumer products. As for AI demand: If you don’t think AI is in demand, you haven’t been looking at the explosive adoption of AI tools from ChatGPT to Sora (consistently high on app charts) by consumers. These products are in high demand, though you’d never know if it your only perspective was through upvoted HN stories and comments.
  - qsort 11mo ago
    I broadly agree with you but the AI demand part is more nuanced. Demand is very large for consumer-ish apps like ChatGPT and Sora, but even Claude, which is huge for coding and arguably the best model right now, is tiny. I've had an interaction with someone nontechnical who, after seeing the Claude logo bounce, asked me why my ChatGPT had fireworks. Yeah, the demand is there, but I have a hard time believing nontechnical people are clamoring for Copilot, they likely don't even know such a thing exists. The market is insane right now.
    - Aurornis 11mo ago
      > but even Claude, which is huge for coding and arguably the best model right now, is tiny. I've had an interaction with someone nontechnical who, after seeing the Claude logo bounce, asked me why my ChatGPT had fireworks So they had used ChatGPT enough to recognize that you were using a different tool? I don’t see this as contradicting anything. Even the nontechnical people in your life are familiar with these tools because they’re using them.
    - diegolas 11mo ago
      i have an acquaintance that uses chatgpt to ask it the lotto numbers. people are definitely using the tool, the purpose may vary.
  - expedition32 11mo ago
    I agree MS365 or whatever the official name is nowadays is just a tax write of for companies. There are alternatives for consumers but enterprise isn't going to screw around with those.
  - tombert 11mo ago
    > Remember when Dropbox was launched and the top comment was doubting its utility because they could replicate it with rsync and other commands duct taped together? That level of disconnectedness with the market is common in every thread about consumer products. "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan. I don't disagree with most of what you said, we can be out of touch a lot of the time, but I kind of hate that this has become the "smoking gun" to dismiss comments on Hacker News. Yes, one person was wrong about Dropbox and said that they could just use an FTP server. Yes, people on here agreed with that person. Yes, sometimes our ability to do things low level blinds us to the fact that the majority of people can't or simply don't want to. That said, most of the negative feedback people get for these things is actually good feedback, and most of the time when people say a project can be accomplished by doing XYZ, that's usually a valid point. Technical people can absolutely be out of touch (and I'm probably worse than average about it), but that doesn't automatically mean that a comment on HN is invalid or useless. While saying "no one wants" the AI features might be a bit of hyperbole, I don't think it's super out of touch, and this is evidenced by the fact that a lot of the VC money for AI ventures is drying up. AI is neat and here to stay, but I think a large chunk of society is coming to terms with the fact that it's not nearly as cool as it was promised to us, and getting a little annoyed with how much AI crap is being thrown at us. YouTube is getting filled with low-effort AI video and AI voice and AI script bullshit, the average web page is turning a tinge of yellow from all the AI generated images that seem to be all over the place, searching is getting almost as bad as it was in 2005 when "SEO" became a thing because of all the AI generated blogs designed to steal clicks. None of this stuff is relegated to the technical crowd, this is stuff even normies have to deal with. And within the scope of HN, I'm sure all of us are getting a little tired of having to review pull requests with huge chunks of clearly-AI-generated code that the writer doesn't really and are large enough to not be realistically reviewable with a lot of shitty, low-effort code.
jjgreen 11mo ago
Business basic goes from $6 to $7 So a 16% hike when current US inflation is 3-4%?
- jfindper 11mo ago
  Percentages are fun because they can make something with a small absolute change look like a giant change. No business is really going to care about $1.00/user, especially when it costs hundreds of dollars per user (or thousands) to migrate entirely away from the Microsoft ecosystem.
  - Terretta 11mo ago
    For an enterprise with fungible employees there is nothing cogent to migrate to.
  - jimnotgym 11mo ago
    And where could you migrate to?
    - jfindper 11mo ago
      No idea? I was just making a point about $1.00 being nothing despite "16% increase" looking big.
- Aurornis 11mo ago
  Did you notice every price was a whole number? Or that this was for business accounts that were already cheap? $1/seat isn’t going to cause a mass migration off the platform. Or that some of the price hikes were 0%? Fixating on this lowest price increase is deliberately misleading. You would also have to go back and calculate price increases over time to compare against inflation over time?
  - jjgreen 11mo ago
    If they charged by the day then (rounding up for your convenience) gets $31/mo, you're missing a trick Redmond ...
graemep 11mo ago
> Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as a competitor’s. Which customers? Some enterprise customers want AI, others restrict its use. Other want integration with something other than Copilot.
jacquesm 11mo ago
Are we treating MS like a start-up now?
tacticus 11mo ago
> Their average customer is probably demanding it The average australian customer managed to get angry enough that the ACCC is working to force a slop free variant and a refund for everyone dark patterned into upgrading.
carlosjobim 11mo ago
> The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News commenters doesn’t have much overlap. You're completely right about this. But how does the Venn diagram look for features between different Office versions and for customer needs? Another commenter here said that Office 98 is good enough for most users, and I have to agree. What reason is there today for somebody to upgrade from a 10 or 15 year old version of Office? Is Copilot it? I've managed a very information-intensive career so far without using MS Office. Apple's iWork software is perfectly fine. And I'm not avoiding Office out of any principle. If I needed or wanted it, I'd be happy to pay for it.
- jimnotgym 11mo ago
  > What reason is there today for somebody to upgrade from a 10 or 15 year old version of Office? Collaborative editing
  - actuallyalys 11mo ago
    People here do seem to miss that they added this relatively big feature. The problem for Microsoft is that Google Docs also has collaborative editing, and in my experience, it actually works better.
  - carlosjobim 11mo ago
    From what I understand, this was introduced in Office 2010. But maybe it wasn't good enough?

bachmeier 11mo ago

> Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as a competitor’s. There's no substance to this comment. It's pure speculation. If you actually want to look at evidence, look at the recent news that Microsoft has cut AI sales targets in half. > The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News commenters doesn’t have much overlap. Ironic that you posted this as a comment on HN.

Aurornis 11mo ago
> Ironic that you posted this as a comment on HN. It’s not ironic at all. Posting here was deliberate to highlight the bubble that happens here for consumer products. This comment section has a lot of people evaluating these price hikes as if they were targeted at HN individual users, not for a product targeted at a different audiences and corporate subscriptions. Hacker News commenters are frequently unaware that their use cases and customer preferences do not reflect the average customer demand in the market. Remember when Dropbox was launched and the top comment was doubting its utility because they could replicate it with rsync and other commands duct taped together? That level of disconnectedness with the market is common in every thread about consumer products. As for AI demand: If you don’t think AI is in demand, you haven’t been looking at the explosive adoption of AI tools from ChatGPT to Sora (consistently high on app charts) by consumers. These products are in high demand, though you’d never know if it your only perspective was through upvoted HN stories and comments.
- qsort 11mo ago
  I broadly agree with you but the AI demand part is more nuanced. Demand is very large for consumer-ish apps like ChatGPT and Sora, but even Claude, which is huge for coding and arguably the best model right now, is tiny. I've had an interaction with someone nontechnical who, after seeing the Claude logo bounce, asked me why my ChatGPT had fireworks. Yeah, the demand is there, but I have a hard time believing nontechnical people are clamoring for Copilot, they likely don't even know such a thing exists. The market is insane right now.
  - Aurornis 11mo ago
    > but even Claude, which is huge for coding and arguably the best model right now, is tiny. I've had an interaction with someone nontechnical who, after seeing the Claude logo bounce, asked me why my ChatGPT had fireworks So they had used ChatGPT enough to recognize that you were using a different tool? I don’t see this as contradicting anything. Even the nontechnical people in your life are familiar with these tools because they’re using them.
  - diegolas 11mo ago
    i have an acquaintance that uses chatgpt to ask it the lotto numbers. people are definitely using the tool, the purpose may vary.
- expedition32 11mo ago
  I agree MS365 or whatever the official name is nowadays is just a tax write of for companies. There are alternatives for consumers but enterprise isn't going to screw around with those.
- tombert 11mo ago
  > Remember when Dropbox was launched and the top comment was doubting its utility because they could replicate it with rsync and other commands duct taped together? That level of disconnectedness with the market is common in every thread about consumer products. "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan. I don't disagree with most of what you said, we can be out of touch a lot of the time, but I kind of hate that this has become the "smoking gun" to dismiss comments on Hacker News. Yes, one person was wrong about Dropbox and said that they could just use an FTP server. Yes, people on here agreed with that person. Yes, sometimes our ability to do things low level blinds us to the fact that the majority of people can't or simply don't want to. That said, most of the negative feedback people get for these things is actually good feedback, and most of the time when people say a project can be accomplished by doing XYZ, that's usually a valid point. Technical people can absolutely be out of touch (and I'm probably worse than average about it), but that doesn't automatically mean that a comment on HN is invalid or useless. While saying "no one wants" the AI features might be a bit of hyperbole, I don't think it's super out of touch, and this is evidenced by the fact that a lot of the VC money for AI ventures is drying up. AI is neat and here to stay, but I think a large chunk of society is coming to terms with the fact that it's not nearly as cool as it was promised to us, and getting a little annoyed with how much AI crap is being thrown at us. YouTube is getting filled with low-effort AI video and AI voice and AI script bullshit, the average web page is turning a tinge of yellow from all the AI generated images that seem to be all over the place, searching is getting almost as bad as it was in 2005 when "SEO" became a thing because of all the AI generated blogs designed to steal clicks. None of this stuff is relegated to the technical crowd, this is stuff even normies have to deal with. And within the scope of HN, I'm sure all of us are getting a little tired of having to review pull requests with huge chunks of clearly-AI-generated code that the writer doesn't really and are large enough to not be realistically reviewable with a lot of shitty, low-effort code.

jjgreen 11mo ago

Business basic goes from $6 to $7 So a 16% hike when current US inflation is 3-4%?

jfindper 11mo ago
Percentages are fun because they can make something with a small absolute change look like a giant change. No business is really going to care about $1.00/user, especially when it costs hundreds of dollars per user (or thousands) to migrate entirely away from the Microsoft ecosystem.
- Terretta 11mo ago
  For an enterprise with fungible employees there is nothing cogent to migrate to.
- jimnotgym 11mo ago
  And where could you migrate to?
  - jfindper 11mo ago
    No idea? I was just making a point about $1.00 being nothing despite "16% increase" looking big.
Aurornis 11mo ago
Did you notice every price was a whole number? Or that this was for business accounts that were already cheap? $1/seat isn’t going to cause a mass migration off the platform. Or that some of the price hikes were 0%? Fixating on this lowest price increase is deliberately misleading. You would also have to go back and calculate price increases over time to compare against inflation over time?
- jjgreen 11mo ago
  If they charged by the day then (rounding up for your convenience) gets $31/mo, you're missing a trick Redmond ...

graemep 11mo ago

> Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as a competitor’s. Which customers? Some enterprise customers want AI, others restrict its use. Other want integration with something other than Copilot.

jacquesm 11mo ago

Are we treating MS like a start-up now?

tacticus 11mo ago

> Their average customer is probably demanding it The average australian customer managed to get angry enough that the ACCC is working to force a slop free variant and a refund for everyone dark patterned into upgrading.

carlosjobim 11mo ago

> The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News commenters doesn’t have much overlap. You're completely right about this. But how does the Venn diagram look for features between different Office versions and for customer needs? Another commenter here said that Office 98 is good enough for most users, and I have to agree. What reason is there today for somebody to upgrade from a 10 or 15 year old version of Office? Is Copilot it? I've managed a very information-intensive career so far without using MS Office. Apple's iWork software is perfectly fine. And I'm not avoiding Office out of any principle. If I needed or wanted it, I'd be happy to pay for it.

jimnotgym 11mo ago
> What reason is there today for somebody to upgrade from a 10 or 15 year old version of Office? Collaborative editing
- actuallyalys 11mo ago
  People here do seem to miss that they added this relatively big feature. The problem for Microsoft is that Google Docs also has collaborative editing, and in my experience, it actually works better.
- carlosjobim 11mo ago
  From what I understand, this was introduced in Office 2010. But maybe it wasn't good enough?