6 ms·
> The question Microsoft should ask themselves is why they built them in the first place It seems like everyone except MS themselves knows why: they got tunnel
by pixelpoet 9mo ago
> The question Microsoft should ask themselves is why they built them in the first place
It seems like everyone except MS themselves knows why: they got tunnel vision from Azure and AI, and completely forgot about what actually made them successful.
Hell they even burnt down one of the most famous brands in the world, MS Office, for zero reason other than to try and whitewash their Copilot name. The marketing guys who made that decision urgently need to find another line of work, because literally a Labrador licking his balls all day would have resulted in a better outcome.
The PMs are completely asleep at the wheel, when they aren't actively self-sabotaging.
- dartharva 9mo agoI don't know about Windows, but it will take a lot more enshittification than that to burn down the Office brand. Excel alone carries it to dominance.
- pixelpoet 9mo agoThe Office brand is literally gone, they renamed it to "Microsoft Copilot 365 app". Check https://office.com https://office.com
- withinboredom 9mo agoCopilot is such a dumb brand name. At least to me, it confers that I need to be a pilot and that it requires training to be one. I just want to be productive, not fly a plane.
- xattt 9mo agoAlso, the Copilot is “waiting in the wings” to take over your job.
- whywhywhywhy 9mo agoAt least the name is honest.
- vjvjvjvjghv 9mo agoAnd when you ask it to do something useful the answer usually is “sorry I can’t do that”.
- maratc 9mo agoHow about "Borland Sidekick" for a brand name?
- everdrive 9mo agoI'm shocked they didn't stash "defender" in there somehow. I used to joke that one name they'd rebrand the start menu as "defender for application launching" and rebrand the power button as "defender for powering on."
- tialaramex 9mo agoMicrosoft's brands are historical markers. There's an era when a new Microsoft product is .NET, and an era when it's Azure, and one where it's 365 etc. If you have a new Doodad, if you say "Microsoft Doodad" the other divisions hate you because that's not their thing. Brand it "Hot Brand Name Unrelated Word" and now you're part of the family even though you have no product purpose and your customers will forever be confused. "Azure Active Directory" wasn't Active Directory, and who'd have guessed a year ago that "365 Co-pilot" would mean the Office applications in 2026. Yes really.
- thewebguyd 9mo ago> Azure Active Directory At one point in time, before AzureAD got renamed to Entra ID (or is it just Entra now?) they had: Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory. All three different products.
- gertrunde 9mo agoThat's not really what happened... https://www.theverge.com/tech/856149/microsoft-365-office-rebrand-copilot https://www.theverge.com/tech/856149/microsoft-365-office-re... tl;dr : the website formerly known as office.com that was a portal for accessing a bunch of stuff changed name to "Microsoft 365" in 2022, and then again more recently (adding the copilot bit). Edit: Although the horror show that is Microsoft product naming in that area left the door wide open for this confusion.
- fredoralive 9mo agoReplacing Office with Microsoft 365 as the brand is still stupid. I was messing with Windows 11 a while back pre Copilot, and in the start menu was a pre installed spam link for “Microsoft 365 (Office)”. The fact they had to put the old brand in parentheses at the end should have been a hint they’re doing something stupid.
- mlnj 9mo agoThe only mention of the word 'Office' on that page is 'The Microsoft Office app is now Microsoft 365 Copilot' It is really sad to see MS kill such a behemoth brand for nothing.
- mrj 9mo agoThe last lines on the page are a FAQ -- "You can find your favorite apps [...] under the Apps section in the left navigation of the Microsoft 365 Copilot web app." Wow
- 1718627440 9mo agoExcept that nobody cares. The Office brand is too large too get killed by Microsoft.
- mlnj 9mo agoIt's already gone. Replaced once with Microsoft 365 and then rapidly and haphazardly by the Copilot name. Only the domain and SEO artifacts remain.
- 1718627440 9mo agoBut no normal person cares. Or do you know somebody that talks about using "Copilot"? Most people even just say "Office" when they mean "MS Office". The brand has entered public use, so that it is not for MS to decide its future.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- vjvjvjvjghv 9mo agoThat is insane. Microsoft Office is probably one of the most recognizable brand names ever. Reminds me of the time when they called everything .NET.
- stackghost 9mo agoLiterally nobody on the planet is worse at naming things than Microsoft.
- randomfrogs 9mo agoApple's not great, but Microsoft is worse.
- stackghost 9mo agoNothing about Apple's naming schemes seems immediately rage-inducing. Sure, their stuff is bland, and I think it's stupid how people refer to doing things "on iPhone" instead of "on an iPhone", but otherwise Apple's products are mostly descriptive. Garage Band has to do with music, Pages is a word processor, iCloud is a cloud storage thing, etc. But even the Labrador licking his own balls that someone else mentioned would be better than Microsoft at naming things. I'm surprised they haven't changed Windows to Microsoft Azure Copilot Platform .NET 365 yet.
- randomfrogs 9mo agoShould I get an M4 Max MacBook Pro, or an M4 Pro Macbook Pro? Or a Mac Pro? Or skip the computer altogether and get an iPhone Pro Max? I mean, c'mon. They are deliberately trying to be confusing.
- acdha 9mo agoUse the real product names and that problem largely goes away: MacBook Pro (M5) MacBook Pro (M4 Ultra) MacBook Pro (M4 Pro) Mac Pro (M2 Ultra) Once you remember the general rule that Pro costs/does more than the base model, it’s really not that hard to keep track of.
- unyttigfjelltol 9mo agoWord, Excel, maybe, but the MS strategy is vendor lock-in not any actual productivity. We see all day long how AI burns down silos and enables cross-platform coordination. I bet MS saw this too and the “CoPilot Everything” pivot was their failed effort to maintain vendor lock-in in the age of LLMs. That failed, devalued their product, since they doubled-down in the meantime on enhanced hostility to cross-platform tools (try lately to read LLM markdown on vanilla M365?) now MS will have that reckoning after conceding a 3-year head start to disrupters and, yes, antagonizing core users with uptempo customer-hostile slop.
- beAbU 9mo agoPretty soon Excel will be renamed to "copilot for spreadsheets", word will be "copilot for documents" etc.
- chii 9mo ago> The PMs are completely asleep at the wheel or, everyone has career aspirations for which they need to demonstrate impact, relevance and in shipping products. Since the current hype is AI, making and being part of the AI hype means career advancement (at the time).
- kakacik 9mo agoWell if its done in a dumb-as-a-fuck hostile style that whole world complaints for years, such effort and PM is utter failure and their CV should be tarnished with this for next 2 decades. And its up to us as a IT community to make it happen. They harmed massively their own company, and failed at the most core reason why they were hired - add long term value to the company. Its a bit the equivalent of architect building huge bridge that then falls, no souls harmed. Such person would have issue finding any other work. Lets do the same, name and shame shouldnt be that hard.
- 3D30497420 9mo agoI saw a presentation awhile back which included the slide (roughly): "Give a PM a numerical goal, and they will burn the company down to hit it." As someone who has worked in big tech and seen decision-making in action, I 100% believe it. This is how incentives are structured.
- boltzmann-brain 9mo agoThat's a dramatic but fitting characterization of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- WorldMaker 9mo agoThe mandate/goal went pretty far up the chain, too. Windows got moved from being under Azure to under "CoreAI" in the org structure. Incentive structures usually reflect org structure. In this case the fingers can point pretty far up on why incentives shifted the way that they did.
- 9mo ago
- sanjit 9mo ago> …because literally a Labrador licking his balls all day would have resulted in a better outcome. My Labrador says a/ he’s neutered c/ dogix user b/ his teams always begin with empathy: people (and retrieves) over outcomes
- pixelpoet 9mo agoThat's a good boy, and I meant no disrespect to our furry family, just that they usually aren't known for their product management skills. I probably should have taken a leaf from UK politics and compared to a lettuce.
- numpad0 9mo agoThere's no way MS employees at all levels don't know. It only doesn't know organizationally. It's just the boring old incentive alignment problem. There needs to be more squeaky wheels than anticipated at all times in IT to justify investments in software thereby your compensations and promotions. One easy way to achieve that is to keep throwing in shiny new things with more moving parts so to keep something on fire to keep spotlights on. Webdevs achieve this by wrapping wrappers, Google by pulling plugs randomly off the wall, and various parts of Microsoft for the past few quarters had done so by introducing new GUI toolkits and adding moar AI to Windows.
- pjc50 9mo agoMassive self-inflicted brand damage worked for X dot com, I suppose.
- XorNot 9mo agoIs X even breaking even at the moment? Last I checked the ad revenue had dried up and boiled off, did they actually manage to cut enough to even it out?
- pjc50 9mo agoStatistia has them at a loss, but varying around breakeven: https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-income-quarterly/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-incom... But that doesn't matter. It was bought as a toy and propaganda network. It can lose money indefinitely as long as its owner is paid by Tesla: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyk6kvyxvzo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyk6kvyxvzo
- direwolf20 9mo agoTesla is also collapsing.
- jodrellblank 9mo agoMusk's net worth was $300Bn in November 2024 and he ended 2025 at $726Bn. ... where is this collapse?
- baal80spam 9mo agoIn the lala land. It's wishful thinking on HN. FWIW, I don't have a skin in this game - just observing the facts.
- direwolf20 9mo agoIn their sales numbers. You know that market cap doesn't mean a lot, right? Especially for a meme stock.
- raffael_de 9mo ago> because literally a Labrador licking his balls all day would have resulted in a better outcome. Where I come from we prefer monkeys throwing darts.
- hulitu 9mo agoMicrosoft ? Google ? Monkeys are suppose to be more intelligent than labradors.
- random2021 9mo ago> The marketing guys who made that decision urgently need to find another line of work, because literally a Labrador licking his They already made money. They know what works to make money by convincing CEO VP PM devs. I do hope they jump to the next company (please meta or apple) and do their duties.
- giancarlostoro 9mo ago> The marketing guys who made that decision urgently need to find another line of work, because literally a Labrador licking his balls all day would have resulted in a better outcome. Marketing Driven Development is terrible. If the CEO of Microsoft keeps pulling off these terrible moves time and time again, I would suggest he has overstayed his welcome, bring in fresh blood. Windows should be an OS not an ad platform. If Office doesn't want to be replaced and remain profitable maybe its time to trim your marketing department, clearly they are overstaffed if they can affect the entire OS itself. I refuse to use Windows. I only use Mac and Linux now, unless an employer gives me a Windows device, that's the only exception, but given the choice I'll ask for Mac or Linux any day.
- moduspol 9mo ago> they got tunnel vision from Azure and AI, and completely forgot about what actually made them successful. They also missed the boat on mobile, and I suspect they didn't want to miss the "AI" boat this time around.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> burnt down one of the most famous brands in the world, MS Office, for zero reason other than to try and whitewash their Copilot name Mac user and Office subscriber here. The wild thing is this soured me on the Copilot brand so broadly that I’ve recommended folks weighing it strongly avoid committing to it as their AI strategy. (None of them did.) That infamous agentic OS tweet pretty much sums up the incentives and response to criticism at Redmond.
- wolvoleo 9mo agoMy work did although they did avoid paying for it (just using the free offerings). It actually serves a purpose to them we can say every employee "has AI" so we're an "AI first" company at fancy press events. Meanwhile nothing actually changed because the free features are even worse than the paid ones. It's basically greenwashing all over again. AI washing :)
- jinushaun 9mo ago> The PMs are completely asleep at the wheel, when they aren't actively self-sabotaging. You’ve never worked at MS, have you? PMs aren’t asleep at the wheel. They are doing their job because their performance reviews are tied to adding these top-down goals into the team’s roadmap. That’s the horrible part.