12 ms·

How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

815 points by gpi 7mo ago

bmenrigh 6mo ago
Reminds me of around 2002 when MS slapped “.Net” onto everything.
Razengan 6mo ago
It's MSN, Plus, Live, Surface, 365 all over again
- frankzander 6mo ago
  But beware if someone say to them Microslop ... they don't like it if someone other make up new names :-)
  - zdragnar 6mo ago
    Is it unreasonable to not appreciate an insult?
- RGamma 6mo ago
  Fabric is the one place for all your data!
- function_seven 6mo ago
  I’m waiting for .Net Copilot with integration to Passport.
  - xfactorial 6mo ago
    Kid: you are playing with forces of nature you cannot comprehend :-) That being said: I would love someone from Marketing and Branding to explain me this “Copilot everywhere” because it is unintelligible (unless they want to dilute it through over exposure).
- darkwater 6mo ago
  I wonder if they have more or less the same marketing team over all these years or now it's just part of the mindset.
stephenlf 6mo ago
Microsoft yearns for the flight simulator.
giancarlostoro 6mo ago
Its annoying especially since Copilot exists in Visual Studio (Code too I believe) and its not exactly "the same" thing as far as I can tell. I really hate Microsoft's naming conventions. At least call that one Copilot for Devs or something more meaningful.
- ethmarks 6mo ago
  The Copilot in Visual Studio (Code) is not the same as Microsoft's Copilot. The former is GitHub's AI product and the latter is Microsoft's AI product. You can tell them apart because GitHub Copilot's icon is a helmet with goggles and Microsoft Copilot's icon is a colourful swirl thing. It's wildly confusing branding not only because they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs, but also because they're both ultimately owned by the same company. I can only assume that the conflicting naming convention was either due to sheer incompetence or because they decided that confusing users was advantageous to them.
  - lou1306 6mo ago
    > they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs Haven't tried it yet but the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode also seems to integrate Claude, Gemini and other non-OAI stuff
    - chatmasta 6mo ago
      They do, and those models are served by Microsoft. You pay a premium per “request” (what that means is not fully clear to me) for certain models. If you use the native chat extension in VSCode for GitHub CoPilot, with Opus model selected, you are not paying Anthropic. This counts against your GitHub Copilot subscription. The Claude Code extension for VSCode from Anthropic will use your Claude subscription. But honestly it’s not very good - I use it but only to “open in terminal” (this adds some small quality of life features like awareness it’s in VSC so it opens files in the editor pane next to it).
      - 6mo ago
jaffa2 6mo ago
Isn’t it just their AI llm thing?
- ezfe 6mo ago
  Copilot is a brand that refers to a variety of products
- Rebelgecko 6mo ago
  I thought that was Cortana? Copilot is the new keyboard button, kinda like the Windows key
- saint_yossarian 6mo ago
  Yes but which one?
- Strom 6mo ago
  Well, no, Office is now also called Copilot. They renamed it!
sublinear 6mo ago
> .. the name ‘Copilot’ now refers to at least 75 different things. Apps, features, platforms, a keyboard key, an entire category of laptops - and a tool for building more Copilots. All named ‘Copilot’. Right, so then it's not a "product", or even a range of "products". It's a brand name and inherently pointless to map out. It doesn't even have to involve any "AI" to be given the branding. All that matters is it's a thing they have, new or old, that they'd like to push people towards.
yunnpp 6mo ago
Plot twist: he used Copilot to generate the figure.
quag 6mo ago
It reminds me of around 2002 when Microsoft named everything ".net".
- andrewmcwatters 6mo ago
  [dead]
- amanzi 6mo ago
  Yep, I remember downloading a beta version of what would be eventually released as Windows Server 2003. The beta version was called Windows .Net Server 2003.
  - rdhatt 6mo ago
    I had some books that referred to it as .NET Server printed before the name change. In the long history of terrible Microsoft names, this was a rare case where they were able to right the ship.
- pcurve 6mo ago
  And “one” like most Fortune 500 companies.
  - auselen 6mo ago
    one.copilot.net
  - IIsi50MHz 6mo ago
    The first one I remember is RealPlayer. I think the official story was that they were having more and more trouble convincing people to install upgrades (at a time when 56k and slower modems were still common, dowloading an app could take minutes, ugrade nags seemed to be ever present), so they decide to name the new major version RealOne Player "because it's the One, the only One you need, the One that does everything for you". Of course, this meant that the next time they tried to get anybody to install a patch, some of us felt annoyed because. RealOne Player wasn't "the One" after all. Why should we get back on the treadmill of waiting for downloads that rarely seem necessary? Ahem. I think this event sensitised me against all attempts at using "one" like that. I mentally flip a table every time.
TradingPlaces 6mo ago
For a moment it was called Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. Naming things is hard.
- chrisjj 6mo ago
  > Naming things is hard ... for people really bad at it.
  - tanseydavid 6mo ago
    "I'm Daryl. These are my 608 other brothers named Daryl"
- harvey9 6mo ago
  Reminds me of Microsoft OneCare which sounds like saying 'wanker' with a slight French accent
  - lucb1e 6mo ago
    Claude sounds like bollocks in Dutch ('kloot') Pretty sure bollocks was the literal example I read on HN like 10 years ago of what your cool-sounding product name will turn out to mean in Spanish, but I can't remember if the moral of the story was to check every language or to just accept it because it'll happen anyway Anyway, the various tech podcasts caught on after a few episodes and seem to now pronounce it more foreignly, so it's now more like clod
- Joeri 6mo ago
  The name that still takes the cake is Github Advanced Security for Azure DevOps.
- direwolf20 6mo ago
  Now 365 is also called Copilot, so it's Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Copilot
gwf 6mo ago
It's the new .NET in that it been so overused as to become almost meaningless.
- layer8 6mo ago
  It means “the AI thing we bolted on here”.
ieie3366 6mo ago
Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have been the first mass market LLM product (2022-2023 code autocomplete) but they completely ensloppified it
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have been the first mass market LLM product Cortana was a great brand. Clippy is still on the shelf. Copilot could have been a deep brand if they pulled it from their flight simulators. Instead it rings hollow of any meaning.
  - ValentineC 6mo ago
    We definitely could have stuck with Cortana for a consumer-facing personal assistant. The first few Halo games were great.
  - twobitshifter 6mo ago
    Right, they had Cortana right there for the built in windows function!
- yunnpp 6mo ago
  [flagged]
- hocuspocus 6mo ago
  I think it's fine. GitHub Copilot is popular as ever, especially in companies that have enterprise tier subscriptions. Plans for personal use pretty good too, pricing is competitive. The VS Code integration and agentic features aren't bad either. Developer tools live in their own space. And I assume most devs don't really care that "Copilot" started to show up everywhere, especially in MS365 products. At least I don't. Conversely, do non-technical people care where the term comes from, and now means "LLM integration" in a bunch of MS products? I think it's better that Google going through Bard, Gemini, IDX, Firebase Studio, Antigravity, ...
lateforwork 6mo ago
Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI. How many products have Copilot? Just about all of them.
- hamasho 6mo ago
  It makes sense. And Google is its own way to name all AI products “Gemini”.
  - yreg 6mo ago
    Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the product lines.
    - chatmasta 6mo ago
      They’ve improved it since the initial launch when the service, model names and plan names all sounded similar and contradictory.
    - jayknight 6mo ago
      Next year they will introduce "hAIngouts" as an AI chat bot.
      - layer8 6mo ago
        Ouch. Maybe "Google wAIve" for collaborative chats.
    - ayewo 6mo ago
      > Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the product lines. I think they were lucky this time that they landed a good name after only a few iterations that has since stuck. Anyone remember Google Bard or LaMDA?
      - spencerflem 6mo ago
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 6mo ago
Related/same discussion: What Is Copilot Exactly? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231
throwaway87543 6mo ago
Okay. But how many products have Gemini or Claude in the name?
- snowchaser 6mo ago
  [dead]
guidedlight 6mo ago
Surprisingly, I immediately noticed that “Gaming Copilot” is missing (i.e. The version of Copilot that Microsoft shoehorned into the Xbox mobile app).
- mrandish 6mo ago
  > “Gaming Copilot” is missing It would be ironic if there was nothing called "CoPilot" for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
  - mcmcmc 6mo ago
    The PM: “People love watching streamers play games, so people who play games must want to watch a game play itself! Introducing Xbox GamePass CoPilot with Microsoft Flight Simulator CoPilot+, all included with your GamePass Ultra subscription for $199.99 a month! Never play your games again!”
- Elfener 6mo ago
  There is also another Xbox Copilot missing (though it has been renamed, probably due it not being an "AI"): https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessibility/copilot https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessib...
mirekrusin 6mo ago
They should have called it Micro.
claaams 6mo ago
No one can ruin microslops branding better than microslop.
georgeburdell 6mo ago
Reminds me of the 2010s when IBM called everything Watson
nlawalker 6mo ago
I actually was just thinking about doing something very similar for this but for "agent," specifically in the Microsoft ecosystem. There are a zillion different proper nouns (products, services, frameworks, toolkits and tools, SDKs etc.) containing "agent" now, plus a bunch of other things that are now "agentic".
- smelendez 6mo ago
  A ton of companies use agent/agentic to mean AI that does something with external effects, as opposed to a chatbot. I’m not sure if it’s overused per se or companies are just really pushing their AI features in general.
chatmasta 6mo ago
I don’t use windows, so most of this doesn’t affect me, but I do use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all, whether “GitHub Copilot” and “VSCode Copilot” (sic?) are the same product? The documentation isn’t even clear, and it’s important because it affects billing. How do these two products interact and where do they NOT overlap? This confusion even bleeds into other coding harnesses. I have no idea which GitHub MCP server I setup in Claude Code, but the domain has “githubcopilot” in it. Am I burning copilot tokens (or “requests” or whatever is their billing unit) when I use this from Claude?
- chokolad 6mo ago
  > I don’t use windows, so most of this doesn’t affect me, but I do use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all, whether “GitHub Copilot” and “VSCode Copilot” (sic?) are the same product? The documentation isn’t even clear, and it’s important because it affects billing. How do these two products interact and where do they NOT overlap? There is no VSCode Copilot. There is Github Copilot integration inside VS Code.
- robocat 6mo ago
  Niece comment tries to explain a little: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47643220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47643220
- shireboy 6mo ago
  Git is a distributed source control system. It's open source and you can use it to version source code on your drive and/or a remote git repository. Github is one of the most popular git repository hosts. In addition to source repositories, it has other services like issue tracking and wikis. A while back, Microsoft bought Github. "Github Copilot" is a service you can buy (with limited free sku) from Github that adds AI capabilities to your Github subscription. One of the ways you can use Github Copilot is by using the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode. This extension lets you use chat inside VSCode in such a way that it can read and write code. It lets you pick which LLM model you want to use: Claude Sonnet, Opus, OpenAI GPT, etc., from the ones they support. Note you don't need another subscription if you only use Github Copilot. They pay Anthropic, you pay Github. You _might_ want another subscription directly with Anthropic if, say, you want to use Claude Code instead. "VSCode Copilot" isn't a thing. Some people might call Github Copilot extension for VSCode "VSCode Copilot". Github MCP server lets AI tools like GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode, Claude Code, or any tool that supports MCP use your Github account to do things like pull requests, read issues, etc. Just using it from Claude Code would not use Github Copilot tokens, UNLESS you used it to work against your Github Copilot service. You would not need a Github Copilot subscription to use it for example to create a pull request or read an issue. But it would use your Github Copilot tokens if, say, you used the MCP from Claude Code to assign a task to Github Copilot. It uses githubcopilot domain because they built it mostly for Github Copilot to use, though MCP is an open standard so it can be used from any MCP-supporting AI tool.
Handy-Man 6mo ago
It's just one brand: Copilot
2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo ago
It sucks they got rid of Cortana. The thought of being Master Chief with a Cortana of your own sounds badass.
BirAdam 6mo ago
The only Microsoft products I’ve actively heard people desire within the last 5 years are VSCode and Excel. Microsoft have so severely damaged their brand that they’ve finally shed the image of oddly gray Dell midtowers running XP on Pentium 4.
- bdangubic 6mo ago
  this is true only on HN. in reality, if you wanted a job where you did not use microsoft products you’d probably have to get a wrench and start doing plumbing work :)
  - lpcvoid 6mo ago
    Nah, especially in technology it's very easy to avoid Microslop. I've done it successfully for many, many years.
    - bdangubic 6mo ago
      possible, sure. easy, I would disagree. starting with government and any government contracting through most enterprises. startups etc perhaps but avoiding msft severely limits your options
  - Zambyte 6mo ago
    Using Microsoft products and desiring Microsoft products are not the same thing.
    - bdangubic 6mo ago
      I for sure misread the post I commented on, you are right, my bad!!
- rr808 6mo ago
  I work in big financials. Everything used to be built on Excel. A lot still is but Python/Jupyterhub or custom applications has taken over a lot of the complex stuff. Excel isn't really essential any more.
r0m4n0 6mo ago
To be fair, Google does it too. I just had the product I work on renamed to Gemini Enterprise. Sure we use Gemini but it’s confusing because it’s not really an “enterprise” version of Gemini. It’s just a way to name drop what it uses under the hood. This was our third rename in 4 years so probably will change again soon
EvanAnderson 6mo ago
Microsoft is uniquely unable to name / brand anything sensibly: "Outlook" / "Outlook Web Access" / "Outlook Web App" / "Outlook.com" / "new Outlook for Windows" / "Outlook (classic)" .NET: .NET Framework. ASP.NET. .NET Core. Windows .NET Server. Ugh...) The love of the term "Explorer": "Internet Explorer" / "Windows Explorer" / "File Explorer" / "MSN Explorer" Similarly is the love of "Defender": "Windows Defender" / "Microsoft Defender" / "Windows Defender Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows Defender Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection" "Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products) Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server platform "Exchange" "Microsoft Teams" / "New Microsoft Teams" / "Microsoft Teams for Business" "Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site Server" / "Site Server Commerce Edition" / "Office Server" / "SharePoint Portal Server" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer" "Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "Skype for Business" / "Skype" / "Skype for Business Online" / "Skype for Business for Microsoft 365" Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows App". The old "System Management Server" became "System Center" and its family of products. There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too: "Great Plains" / "Dynamics GP" / "Navision" / "Dynamics NAV" / "Solomon" / "Dynamics SL" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" / "Dynamics 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" / "Dynamics 365 Business Central" (For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update_Notification_Utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update...
- ValentineC 6mo ago
  > "Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products) I thought this was the same app/protocol, only more enshittified as time went by.
- 6mo ago
shireboy 6mo ago
I get that it's annoying, but also don't know what else one would do? "FooPilot is our Office AI toolset, BarWonk is our code assist tool"? There are also a lot of Claudes and GPTs. Naming things is hard.
- BenFranklin100 6mo ago
  The problem is not annoyance. The problem is confusion. One should aim for clarity. FooPilot, Barwonk, etc.. would actually be a vast improvement.
- Gigachad 6mo ago
  They could start by not renaming Microsoft Office and laptops as copilot.
  - Ukv 6mo ago
    > start by not renaming Microsoft Office To my understanding, Office (or "Microsoft 365") itself becoming "Copilot" was just confused messaging about the "Office Hub" app/shortcut being repurposed.
walrus01 6mo ago
This is what happens when you have some sort of top-down directive from the C-level people to put "AI" in everything, and dozens of department/project managers who all have their own fiefdoms
thedelanyo 6mo ago
Someone said - in Linux, everything is a file. In Microsoft, everything is a copilot. Lol.
- Waterluvian 6mo ago
  Microsoft .NET Copilot
  - gedy 6mo ago
    Microsoft Azure .NET Copilot 365
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - gpi 6mo ago
      Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 355
      - malfist 6mo ago
        Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 355 (classic)
        FridgeSeal 6mo ago
        Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 365 (classic) Professional Edition
    - VladVladikoff 6mo ago
      I’ve been wondering lately if the next Xbox will have “copilot” in the name. With an easy to accidentally press dedicated button on the controller that interrupts the game you’re playing to start an AI chat.
      - anal_reactor 6mo ago
yieldcrv 6mo ago
The real question is how many products could AWS call the same thing two extremes at play here. A single brand name masquarading as the same product, versus a hundred brand names that don’t tell you a thing about what the product is Kind of why I’m fond of GCP now. Just name it what it is
1a527dd5 6mo ago
Ignoring the disaster that is their branding/naming. Copilot is _amazing_. Everyone is hyping about Claude, but I'm way more productive with the copilot cli. The copilot cloud agent is great, and copilot code review is great (we also tried the new very expensive claude code review - it was slow and expensive). Forget that it's Microsoft, forget that everything is Copilot and go and give it a shot.
- altern8 6mo ago
  Nice try, Nadella!
- brcmthrowaway 6mo ago
  How much is it?
- karlitooo 6mo ago
  maybe a different thing but trying to work with copilot as part of the microsoft apps (e.g. automation flows) feels like it has zero reasoning ability, just says the same thing over and over like a chatbot rather than LLM.
- quantummagic 6mo ago
  > Copilot is _amazing_. Do you mean Github Copilot? If not, which Copilot are you recommending? Can you give a link to where it can be purchased or trialed? I'm genuinely interested in trying out whatever you're recommending; but it highlights the problem, that I literally don't know what you're actually referencing.
- fortran77 6mo ago
  I don't know if you're kidding, but I agree with you. I use the Copilot CLI in VS Code and Visual Studio and it works better than anything else. I do use Claude models with it....
- ex-aws-dude 6mo ago
  I find a lot of devs I’ve worked with don’t even know about copilot CLI and just think copilot is the VS plugin Due to microsoft’s confusing naming
rdsubhas 6mo ago
Blame brain dead product managers who merely want to hoist their poor quality yearly performance review slop on something existing that carries SEO/SEM value. Most of the time, these piggy backers only pull down the value of what they're riding on.
chatmasta 6mo ago
Related: a list of all Microsoft login portals (there are 609 of them). https://msportals.io/ https://msportals.io/
- smallerize 6mo ago
  At least some of those were from acquisitions. All the Copilots are their own fault.
- fortran77 6mo ago
  These drive my password manager nuts, especially when there are actually different logins for them. I just put a note in it saying exactly what service it's for.
- stackghost 6mo ago
  Holy shit. What the hell is Kevin Scott (Microslop's CTO) doing with his time? How can any reasonable leader look at this disaster and go "hmm, yes, this looks like a sane and sustainable setup for future growth"?
- cranium 6mo ago
  For a client I had to use "Windows App" to connect remotely to their cloud machine – and finding the app was the easy part.
schappim 6mo ago
Microsoft is not alone in this. Apple does the same thing! There is Siri on iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, Apple TV, and CarPlay and are all different different incarnation of Siri (with different capabilities). Then there is everything else like the Siri Remote, Siri Suggestions (and all their types: Siri apps suggestions, Maps, keyboard, Share Sheet, etc), Siri Shortcuts, and Siri Knowledge (WolframAlpha + Wikipedia + other databases?). I'm sure 75% of these will be rebranded "Apple Intelligence" by the end of the year...
- flexagoon 6mo ago
  Idk, at least in Apple's case it all refers to a voice assistant and some of the features integrated with it. If they were like MS, they would add Siri into everything and then call it "Siri Cloud", "Siri Messages", etc (if they were even more like MS, iMessage would be "Siri 365 Communication Suite")
  - schappim 6mo ago
    These are all non talky talky: Siri Suggestions, Siri Knowledge (Safari / Spotlight Intelligence), Siri Shortcuts (Automation, not voice), Siri Intelligence (On-device ML features), Siri Widget/Watch face… you get the idea. There was a time when “Siri” was the catch all for Smart/ML.
  - layer8 6mo ago
    It also refers to various "smart" suggestions that have nothing to do with the voice assistant: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-siri-suggestions-on-or-off-iph6f94af287/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-siri-suggestions... Nowadays Apple would brand such features as "Apple Intelligence", but since they already existed long before, they are "Siri". Though I agree that it's not quite as badly ubiquitous as Copilot.
  - ryandrake 6mo ago
    > (if they were even more like MS, iMessage would be "Siri 365 Communication Suite") Siri 365 Communication Suite .NET Enterprise Edition With Copilot
Dwedit 6mo ago
I have personally nullified one of those, namely the Copilot Key. It took a low level keyboard hook, and blocking a specific sequence of keys, then injecting the right ctrl key back.
Traubenfuchs 6mo ago
How many of those are used regularly by more than 0.1% users?
firefoxd 6mo ago
Just this last week, I wrote about the confusion this creates in the workplace[0]. My coworker said "copilot" literally referring to any code assistant, the same way we say bandaid or kleenex. I thought he was talking about Copilot, the one I see nagging me on Microsoft teams. We had a full discussion about completely different tools without realizing it. [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/what-is-copilot-exactly https://idiallo.com/blog/what-is-copilot-exactly [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231
- morkalork 6mo ago
  What's fun is getting into the co-pilot comparison conversational because they are definitely not all equal. Co-pilot 365 is a donkey for one
  - eterm 6mo ago
    I refuse to believe any are as bad as the Azure Portal one. It feels like pre-GPT levels of smart.
tedk-42 6mo ago
Microsoft slowly becoming the IBM of the 21st century.
ChicagoDave 6mo ago
If this isn’t an indictment of MS management (pun intended), I don’t know what is.
BikeRanger 6mo ago
We just call it Cope. Azure Cope. GitHub Cope. SharePoint Cope. Etc.
starkeeper 6mo ago
How many windows services or low level system dlls has Microsoft lost the source code for and or does not even know what they actually do? Copilot does not know either but I'm sure the answer is a much bigger number then anyone would be comfortable with.
claysmithr 6mo ago
I can't wait for Copilot Copilot for Copilot 365 X Copilot X
Tiereven 6mo ago
I guess if Copilot were actually a singular entity that had all of these touch points and a decent security model to prevent unintentionally exposing your data - it would be pretty cool.
mandeepj 6mo ago
It's not a product, but enablement or a feature! Just like a 'Pro' label :-)
nfw2 6mo ago
Is there a copilot for Microsoft flight simulator though?
paulddraper 6mo ago
> A few weeks ago, I tried to explain to someone what Microsoft Copilot is. I couldn’t It means Microsoft AI. Hope that helps!
senectus1 6mo ago
approximately the same number of products they have called "surface"
xyst 6mo ago
Microslop trying really hard to shove copilot shite down our throats
gucci_breakfast 6mo ago
What an absolutely ridiculous and deeply unserious organization
KnuthIsGod 6mo ago
Slop-Pilot for Copilot. One could argue that it is an oxymoron.
ampedcast 6mo ago
Was copilot branding restricted only to their AI products?
simonw 6mo ago
The thing that really confuses me about this is that it has very real negative consequences. I cannot have a conversation about Copilot! If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about. And if I ask them (which I always do) they still have trouble describing the product, because Microsoft give them no help at all. How DO you explain that something was the Copilot thing that's a feature on GitHub.com that shows up in the web interface there, as opposed to whatever the heck other forms of GitHub Copilot. (Amusingly there are 15 "GitHub Copilot..." products listed on the linked website and I can't tell which if any of those 15 corresponds to the chat UI on the logged in GitHub.com homepage, or that's available in the "Agents" tab in a repository.) Surely Microsoft feel this pain all the time? Bug reports in "Copilot" must be almost impossible to interpret.
- whilenot-dev 6mo ago
  That almost seems like a deliberate strategy by some "genius" PM... a lot less bug reports for specific products with actionable items for their teams, in favor of more insufficient reports to blame the one creating the report instead.
- qxxx 6mo ago
  at my workplace some of the devs are using github copilot (their own private account). Boss said that our company already has copilot and everyone can use it instead of private accounts.. it is enabled in our microsoft account. Of course, this is not what the devs need. Now I understand why this is so confusing, because there are many copilot products.
- cmsefton 6mo ago
  What are being called GitHub Copilot Products seems to confuse products with licensing plan and features. I always think of GitHub Copilot as the product. I can purchase the Business or Enterprise plan. That enables features like Reviews, Chat and so on. IMO this chart (at least for GitHub Copilot) is confusing products, features and licensing. That's not to say it isn't confusing understanding what features are available when you get a GitHub Copilot license, but calling them all Products feels wrong. I can't purchase GitHub Copilot Reviews separately as far as I'm aware.
ilovecake1984 6mo ago
It’s terrible, because a lot of the thing named copilot are not very good, which poisons the brand.
billforsternz 6mo ago
We should probably be grateful Microsoft didn't name it .NET
billforsternz 6mo ago
I remember Joel of Joel on Software publicly working through the process of creating a remote desktop for normals type product called Copilot back in the day. If I remember correctly he had to pay quite a pretty penny to acquire copilot.com. I wonder if MS Copilot meant he made money on that investment?
booleandilemma 6mo ago
I don't understand, usually Microsoft is so good at naming things!
cylemons 6mo ago
I guess Microsoft wants us to think about all these copilots as a single product. Like, "the copilot in visual studio", "the copilot on github", "the copilot on office" etc.
shykes 6mo ago
This pattern seems to repeat itself often in large tech companies. Does anyone remember SAP Hana?
triage8004 6mo ago
Windows is the harness for Copilot
jmorenoamor 6mo ago
I think they should start to think about having a pilot.
moezd 6mo ago
That's the point: If you receive a bug report about "Copilot" and it will take you forever to triage what's actually broken, then the ticket gets closed because it becomes stale eventually. Therefore you don't have a complaint anymore!
dwedge 6mo ago
Microsoft has always seemed to be a little chaotic and buggy in everything it did, but it was always dominant and assertive. Recently it seems like they might be about to do the impossible and throw away that market position - their cloud is imploding, they all but gave up on their AI goals, apparently the Windows UI is designed now by employees who use Macs so never use their own dog food, and while I don't believe all the people saying they'll move the Linux, I'm wondering what it takes for a few large businesses to make to the macbook Neo. At this point it's mostly 365 holding people in, and that's cross compatible
- make3 6mo ago
  gaming too I guess still
  - zero_bias 6mo ago
    This won’t last for long too. Valve with SteamDeck and apparent future release of SteamMachine/SteamOS is preparing users for Linux gaming
    - hypercube33 6mo ago
      My consoles (Xbox and switch) are terrible at the basic thing like updates. My steam deck on the other hand does update all the time but I never notice and haven't ever picked it up off the dock and been stopped from playing a game because it needed to update something. I think they'll start eating everones lunch if they keep making it easier to use and if their 2026 products are good.
    - make3 6mo ago
      either that or AAA games mostly becoming streamed from Clouds like Nvidia now
      - pluc 6mo ago
        Google tried that and there's still some blood on the wall
aimadetools 6mo ago
[flagged]
CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
Surely it's just a synonym for 'agent' or 'helper'.
faragon 6mo ago
"All your Copilot are belong to us"
leokennis 6mo ago
While Microsoft in general is a mess, this article is like saying: what even is “save”? Microsoft has 1286 save products! Save in Word, Save in Paint, Save in Notepad… Copilot means there’s a button/menu/command in the Microsoft app/site/tool that allows the user to pass whatever text/file/site/context/prompt is on the screen to the Copilot AI backend so it can summarize/transform/expand/explain it, and then have the user wait an inordinate amount of time for a mediocre response.
- Heloseaa 6mo ago
  I don’t think the comparison is fair. Some of the products presented here are named copilot themselves, or at least for some, copilot + the domain of the base product. It’s not just a functionality like saving. Which can get even messier in people’s head, since they will usually reference any product they use as to copilote, when they may be talking about different ones sometimes. For instance, my friends who uses teams or the 365 suit refer to copilot as the integrated AI tool within these softwares. When, as a SWE, where I hear about copilot, it usually refers to the coding assistant/AI code completion/agent tools for me.
- siva7 6mo ago
  That's a bad analogy you made. Copilot is a Product Platform, Save is a basic software function that even my grandma could explain what it does. You don't have to believe me, test it yourself: Let your grandma explain what save does in Microsoft Word or Excel. Then let her explain what Copilot does in Outlook, VSCode, Bing, Github Copilot, Bing, Sharepoint, Microsoft 365 and so on..
  - LiamPowell 6mo ago
    > Microsoft 365 That's Microsoft 365 Copilot now actually.
wei03288 6mo ago
[dead]
tosti 6mo ago
So... That means all of those products are for entertainment purposes only. Truth in advertising!
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
ape4 6mo ago
Didn't they rename everything "dotnet" when that was the hot thing
amelius 6mo ago
And where is Microsoft Flight Attendant, I need a cup of coffee.
OJFord 6mo ago
I think it's fair enough that 'the assistant in the GUI/cloud program X, like Clippy++' has the same name for all X. But it's absolutely bonkers that that's the same name as the IDE auto-complete integration, and the GitHub agentic worker, and the GitHub chat, and the GitHub reviewer.
benatkin 6mo ago
Before any of these Copilots, there was Project Aardvark. It was a summer project by Joel Spolsky's company Fog Creek Software in which they created a remote desktop product called Copilot. They made a documentary about it: https://youtu.be/YbrkZ07LKbk?si=LAYznsR6Zd1YdGkb https://youtu.be/YbrkZ07LKbk?si=LAYznsR6Zd1YdGkb
uda 6mo ago
It's a corporate practice they find hard to shake, and sadly enough, it seems to work. The idea is about platform solutions vs. best of breed, and they keep betting on the platform. In big organizations with lengthy and complex contracting procedures, platform solutions will always win. The actual solution for the economy is Interoperability, if we fight for governments to require it, we can get platform providers that allow best of breed bundles. We will gain open market platforms, where you choose the market platform that works for you with the combination of solutions that work for you with one or just few contracts. Markets that close themselves or fight their vendors will lose both vendors and customers.
duxup 6mo ago
This reminds me of the old .NET marketing mess where everything was .NET
butz 6mo ago
Yes.
ajaimk 6mo ago
Is this more than Google's Hangouts?
eboy 6mo ago
[dead]
dsteel 6mo ago
The naming confusion points to a deeper problem. Everyone is building the "AI does a thing" layer (coding, writing, searching). It looks like no one is building the "AI things work together" layer. We run 14 AI agents. CrewAI, LangGraph, Google's 8 patterns... all solve how agents pass data to each other. None of them answer: which agent has authority over which domain? What happens when two agents disagree? Who owns the escalation path? Those are organizational problems, not technical ones. And organizational problems don't get solved by naming a product "Copilot."
thomasjudge 6mo ago
Related: (parody): if you haven't seen it, this is a critique - from microsofties I think - of MSFT product branding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k
SashaVasilev 6mo ago
[dead]
fuckinpuppers 6mo ago
Too many. Rebranding Office 365 as Copilot 365 or whatever .. seriously?!? They already screwed up Outlook (having to ask people “do you open the outlook app on your desktop computer, or do you type outlook.com?” And still not getting a helpful answer back from non technical people SUCKS) Things people know that don’t need to be renamed: Windows Office Azure Xbox Bing GitHub LinkedIn adding a “Copilot” AI “buddy” to everything is a little confusing as-is, unless the end goal is for it to be a persistent buddy for the user no matter where they are at in the Microsoft ecosystem. But rebranding entire products is crazy
aimemobe 6mo ago
[flagged]
Suppafly 6mo ago
Microsoft always does this, they let their marketing drive the ship for some reason. Before copilot it was 365. Before that it renaming a bunch of stuff to .net.

815 points by gpi 7mo ago

bmenrigh 6mo ago

Reminds me of around 2002 when MS slapped “.Net” onto everything.

Razengan 6mo ago

It's MSN, Plus, Live, Surface, 365 all over again

frankzander 6mo ago
But beware if someone say to them Microslop ... they don't like it if someone other make up new names :-)
- zdragnar 6mo ago
  Is it unreasonable to not appreciate an insult?
RGamma 6mo ago
Fabric is the one place for all your data!
function_seven 6mo ago
I’m waiting for .Net Copilot with integration to Passport.
- xfactorial 6mo ago
  Kid: you are playing with forces of nature you cannot comprehend :-) That being said: I would love someone from Marketing and Branding to explain me this “Copilot everywhere” because it is unintelligible (unless they want to dilute it through over exposure).
darkwater 6mo ago
I wonder if they have more or less the same marketing team over all these years or now it's just part of the mindset.

stephenlf 6mo ago

Microsoft yearns for the flight simulator.

giancarlostoro 6mo ago

Its annoying especially since Copilot exists in Visual Studio (Code too I believe) and its not exactly "the same" thing as far as I can tell. I really hate Microsoft's naming conventions. At least call that one Copilot for Devs or something more meaningful.

ethmarks 6mo ago
The Copilot in Visual Studio (Code) is not the same as Microsoft's Copilot. The former is GitHub's AI product and the latter is Microsoft's AI product. You can tell them apart because GitHub Copilot's icon is a helmet with goggles and Microsoft Copilot's icon is a colourful swirl thing. It's wildly confusing branding not only because they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs, but also because they're both ultimately owned by the same company. I can only assume that the conflicting naming convention was either due to sheer incompetence or because they decided that confusing users was advantageous to them.
- lou1306 6mo ago
  > they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs Haven't tried it yet but the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode also seems to integrate Claude, Gemini and other non-OAI stuff
  - chatmasta 6mo ago
    They do, and those models are served by Microsoft. You pay a premium per “request” (what that means is not fully clear to me) for certain models. If you use the native chat extension in VSCode for GitHub CoPilot, with Opus model selected, you are not paying Anthropic. This counts against your GitHub Copilot subscription. The Claude Code extension for VSCode from Anthropic will use your Claude subscription. But honestly it’s not very good - I use it but only to “open in terminal” (this adds some small quality of life features like awareness it’s in VSC so it opens files in the editor pane next to it).
    - 6mo ago

jaffa2 6mo ago

Isn’t it just their AI llm thing?

ezfe 6mo ago
Copilot is a brand that refers to a variety of products
Rebelgecko 6mo ago
I thought that was Cortana? Copilot is the new keyboard button, kinda like the Windows key
saint_yossarian 6mo ago
Yes but which one?
Strom 6mo ago
Well, no, Office is now also called Copilot. They renamed it!

sublinear 6mo ago

> .. the name ‘Copilot’ now refers to at least 75 different things. Apps, features, platforms, a keyboard key, an entire category of laptops - and a tool for building more Copilots. All named ‘Copilot’. Right, so then it's not a "product", or even a range of "products". It's a brand name and inherently pointless to map out. It doesn't even have to involve any "AI" to be given the branding. All that matters is it's a thing they have, new or old, that they'd like to push people towards.

yunnpp 6mo ago

Plot twist: he used Copilot to generate the figure.

quag 6mo ago

It reminds me of around 2002 when Microsoft named everything ".net".

andrewmcwatters 6mo ago
[dead]
amanzi 6mo ago
Yep, I remember downloading a beta version of what would be eventually released as Windows Server 2003. The beta version was called Windows .Net Server 2003.
- rdhatt 6mo ago
  I had some books that referred to it as .NET Server printed before the name change. In the long history of terrible Microsoft names, this was a rare case where they were able to right the ship.
pcurve 6mo ago
And “one” like most Fortune 500 companies.
- auselen 6mo ago
  one.copilot.net
- IIsi50MHz 6mo ago
  The first one I remember is RealPlayer. I think the official story was that they were having more and more trouble convincing people to install upgrades (at a time when 56k and slower modems were still common, dowloading an app could take minutes, ugrade nags seemed to be ever present), so they decide to name the new major version RealOne Player "because it's the One, the only One you need, the One that does everything for you". Of course, this meant that the next time they tried to get anybody to install a patch, some of us felt annoyed because. RealOne Player wasn't "the One" after all. Why should we get back on the treadmill of waiting for downloads that rarely seem necessary? Ahem. I think this event sensitised me against all attempts at using "one" like that. I mentally flip a table every time.

TradingPlaces 6mo ago

For a moment it was called Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. Naming things is hard.

chrisjj 6mo ago
> Naming things is hard ... for people really bad at it.
- tanseydavid 6mo ago
  "I'm Daryl. These are my 608 other brothers named Daryl"
harvey9 6mo ago
Reminds me of Microsoft OneCare which sounds like saying 'wanker' with a slight French accent
- lucb1e 6mo ago
  Claude sounds like bollocks in Dutch ('kloot') Pretty sure bollocks was the literal example I read on HN like 10 years ago of what your cool-sounding product name will turn out to mean in Spanish, but I can't remember if the moral of the story was to check every language or to just accept it because it'll happen anyway Anyway, the various tech podcasts caught on after a few episodes and seem to now pronounce it more foreignly, so it's now more like clod
Joeri 6mo ago
The name that still takes the cake is Github Advanced Security for Azure DevOps.
direwolf20 6mo ago
Now 365 is also called Copilot, so it's Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Copilot

gwf 6mo ago

It's the new .NET in that it been so overused as to become almost meaningless.

layer8 6mo ago
It means “the AI thing we bolted on here”.

ieie3366 6mo ago

Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have been the first mass market LLM product (2022-2023 code autocomplete) but they completely ensloppified it

JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have been the first mass market LLM product Cortana was a great brand. Clippy is still on the shelf. Copilot could have been a deep brand if they pulled it from their flight simulators. Instead it rings hollow of any meaning.
- ValentineC 6mo ago
  We definitely could have stuck with Cortana for a consumer-facing personal assistant. The first few Halo games were great.
- twobitshifter 6mo ago
  Right, they had Cortana right there for the built in windows function!
yunnpp 6mo ago
[flagged]
hocuspocus 6mo ago
I think it's fine. GitHub Copilot is popular as ever, especially in companies that have enterprise tier subscriptions. Plans for personal use pretty good too, pricing is competitive. The VS Code integration and agentic features aren't bad either. Developer tools live in their own space. And I assume most devs don't really care that "Copilot" started to show up everywhere, especially in MS365 products. At least I don't. Conversely, do non-technical people care where the term comes from, and now means "LLM integration" in a bunch of MS products? I think it's better that Google going through Bard, Gemini, IDX, Firebase Studio, Antigravity, ...

lateforwork 6mo ago

Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI. How many products have Copilot? Just about all of them.

hamasho 6mo ago
It makes sense. And Google is its own way to name all AI products “Gemini”.
- yreg 6mo ago
  Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the product lines.
  - chatmasta 6mo ago
    They’ve improved it since the initial launch when the service, model names and plan names all sounded similar and contradictory.
  - jayknight 6mo ago
    Next year they will introduce "hAIngouts" as an AI chat bot.
    - layer8 6mo ago
      Ouch. Maybe "Google wAIve" for collaborative chats.
  - ayewo 6mo ago
    > Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the product lines. I think they were lucky this time that they landed a good name after only a few iterations that has since stuck. Anyone remember Google Bard or LaMDA?
    - spencerflem 6mo ago

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 6mo ago

Related/same discussion: What Is Copilot Exactly? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231

throwaway87543 6mo ago

Okay. But how many products have Gemini or Claude in the name?

snowchaser 6mo ago
[dead]

guidedlight 6mo ago

Surprisingly, I immediately noticed that “Gaming Copilot” is missing (i.e. The version of Copilot that Microsoft shoehorned into the Xbox mobile app).

mrandish 6mo ago
> “Gaming Copilot” is missing It would be ironic if there was nothing called "CoPilot" for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
- mcmcmc 6mo ago
  The PM: “People love watching streamers play games, so people who play games must want to watch a game play itself! Introducing Xbox GamePass CoPilot with Microsoft Flight Simulator CoPilot+, all included with your GamePass Ultra subscription for $199.99 a month! Never play your games again!”
Elfener 6mo ago
There is also another Xbox Copilot missing (though it has been renamed, probably due it not being an "AI"): https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessibility/copilot https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessib...

mirekrusin 6mo ago

They should have called it Micro.

claaams 6mo ago

No one can ruin microslops branding better than microslop.

georgeburdell 6mo ago

Reminds me of the 2010s when IBM called everything Watson

nlawalker 6mo ago

I actually was just thinking about doing something very similar for this but for "agent," specifically in the Microsoft ecosystem. There are a zillion different proper nouns (products, services, frameworks, toolkits and tools, SDKs etc.) containing "agent" now, plus a bunch of other things that are now "agentic".

smelendez 6mo ago
A ton of companies use agent/agentic to mean AI that does something with external effects, as opposed to a chatbot. I’m not sure if it’s overused per se or companies are just really pushing their AI features in general.

chatmasta 6mo ago

I don’t use windows, so most of this doesn’t affect me, but I do use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all, whether “GitHub Copilot” and “VSCode Copilot” (sic?) are the same product? The documentation isn’t even clear, and it’s important because it affects billing. How do these two products interact and where do they NOT overlap? This confusion even bleeds into other coding harnesses. I have no idea which GitHub MCP server I setup in Claude Code, but the domain has “githubcopilot” in it. Am I burning copilot tokens (or “requests” or whatever is their billing unit) when I use this from Claude?

chokolad 6mo ago
> I don’t use windows, so most of this doesn’t affect me, but I do use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all, whether “GitHub Copilot” and “VSCode Copilot” (sic?) are the same product? The documentation isn’t even clear, and it’s important because it affects billing. How do these two products interact and where do they NOT overlap? There is no VSCode Copilot. There is Github Copilot integration inside VS Code.
robocat 6mo ago
Niece comment tries to explain a little: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47643220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47643220
shireboy 6mo ago
Git is a distributed source control system. It's open source and you can use it to version source code on your drive and/or a remote git repository. Github is one of the most popular git repository hosts. In addition to source repositories, it has other services like issue tracking and wikis. A while back, Microsoft bought Github. "Github Copilot" is a service you can buy (with limited free sku) from Github that adds AI capabilities to your Github subscription. One of the ways you can use Github Copilot is by using the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode. This extension lets you use chat inside VSCode in such a way that it can read and write code. It lets you pick which LLM model you want to use: Claude Sonnet, Opus, OpenAI GPT, etc., from the ones they support. Note you don't need another subscription if you only use Github Copilot. They pay Anthropic, you pay Github. You _might_ want another subscription directly with Anthropic if, say, you want to use Claude Code instead. "VSCode Copilot" isn't a thing. Some people might call Github Copilot extension for VSCode "VSCode Copilot". Github MCP server lets AI tools like GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode, Claude Code, or any tool that supports MCP use your Github account to do things like pull requests, read issues, etc. Just using it from Claude Code would not use Github Copilot tokens, UNLESS you used it to work against your Github Copilot service. You would not need a Github Copilot subscription to use it for example to create a pull request or read an issue. But it would use your Github Copilot tokens if, say, you used the MCP from Claude Code to assign a task to Github Copilot. It uses githubcopilot domain because they built it mostly for Github Copilot to use, though MCP is an open standard so it can be used from any MCP-supporting AI tool.

Handy-Man 6mo ago

It's just one brand: Copilot

2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo ago

It sucks they got rid of Cortana. The thought of being Master Chief with a Cortana of your own sounds badass.

BirAdam 6mo ago

The only Microsoft products I’ve actively heard people desire within the last 5 years are VSCode and Excel. Microsoft have so severely damaged their brand that they’ve finally shed the image of oddly gray Dell midtowers running XP on Pentium 4.

bdangubic 6mo ago
this is true only on HN. in reality, if you wanted a job where you did not use microsoft products you’d probably have to get a wrench and start doing plumbing work :)
- lpcvoid 6mo ago
  Nah, especially in technology it's very easy to avoid Microslop. I've done it successfully for many, many years.
  - bdangubic 6mo ago
    possible, sure. easy, I would disagree. starting with government and any government contracting through most enterprises. startups etc perhaps but avoiding msft severely limits your options
- Zambyte 6mo ago
  Using Microsoft products and desiring Microsoft products are not the same thing.
  - bdangubic 6mo ago
    I for sure misread the post I commented on, you are right, my bad!!
rr808 6mo ago
I work in big financials. Everything used to be built on Excel. A lot still is but Python/Jupyterhub or custom applications has taken over a lot of the complex stuff. Excel isn't really essential any more.

r0m4n0 6mo ago

To be fair, Google does it too. I just had the product I work on renamed to Gemini Enterprise. Sure we use Gemini but it’s confusing because it’s not really an “enterprise” version of Gemini. It’s just a way to name drop what it uses under the hood. This was our third rename in 4 years so probably will change again soon

EvanAnderson 6mo ago

Microsoft is uniquely unable to name / brand anything sensibly: "Outlook" / "Outlook Web Access" / "Outlook Web App" / "Outlook.com" / "new Outlook for Windows" / "Outlook (classic)" .NET: .NET Framework. ASP.NET. .NET Core. Windows .NET Server. Ugh...) The love of the term "Explorer": "Internet Explorer" / "Windows Explorer" / "File Explorer" / "MSN Explorer" Similarly is the love of "Defender": "Windows Defender" / "Microsoft Defender" / "Windows Defender Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows Defender Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection" "Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products) Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server platform "Exchange" "Microsoft Teams" / "New Microsoft Teams" / "Microsoft Teams for Business" "Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site Server" / "Site Server Commerce Edition" / "Office Server" / "SharePoint Portal Server" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer" "Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "Skype for Business" / "Skype" / "Skype for Business Online" / "Skype for Business for Microsoft 365" Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows App". The old "System Management Server" became "System Center" and its family of products. There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too: "Great Plains" / "Dynamics GP" / "Navision" / "Dynamics NAV" / "Solomon" / "Dynamics SL" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" / "Dynamics 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" / "Dynamics 365 Business Central" (For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update_Notification_Utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update...

ValentineC 6mo ago
> "Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products) I thought this was the same app/protocol, only more enshittified as time went by.
6mo ago

shireboy 6mo ago

I get that it's annoying, but also don't know what else one would do? "FooPilot is our Office AI toolset, BarWonk is our code assist tool"? There are also a lot of Claudes and GPTs. Naming things is hard.

BenFranklin100 6mo ago
The problem is not annoyance. The problem is confusion. One should aim for clarity. FooPilot, Barwonk, etc.. would actually be a vast improvement.
Gigachad 6mo ago
They could start by not renaming Microsoft Office and laptops as copilot.
- Ukv 6mo ago
  > start by not renaming Microsoft Office To my understanding, Office (or "Microsoft 365") itself becoming "Copilot" was just confused messaging about the "Office Hub" app/shortcut being repurposed.

walrus01 6mo ago

This is what happens when you have some sort of top-down directive from the C-level people to put "AI" in everything, and dozens of department/project managers who all have their own fiefdoms

thedelanyo 6mo ago

Someone said - in Linux, everything is a file. In Microsoft, everything is a copilot. Lol.

Waterluvian 6mo ago
Microsoft .NET Copilot
- gedy 6mo ago
  Microsoft Azure .NET Copilot 365
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - gpi 6mo ago
    Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 355
    - malfist 6mo ago
      Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 355 (classic)
      - FridgeSeal 6mo ago
        Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 365 (classic) Professional Edition
  - VladVladikoff 6mo ago
    I’ve been wondering lately if the next Xbox will have “copilot” in the name. With an easy to accidentally press dedicated button on the controller that interrupts the game you’re playing to start an AI chat.
    - anal_reactor 6mo ago

yieldcrv 6mo ago

The real question is how many products could AWS call the same thing two extremes at play here. A single brand name masquarading as the same product, versus a hundred brand names that don’t tell you a thing about what the product is Kind of why I’m fond of GCP now. Just name it what it is

1a527dd5 6mo ago

Ignoring the disaster that is their branding/naming. Copilot is _amazing_. Everyone is hyping about Claude, but I'm way more productive with the copilot cli. The copilot cloud agent is great, and copilot code review is great (we also tried the new very expensive claude code review - it was slow and expensive). Forget that it's Microsoft, forget that everything is Copilot and go and give it a shot.

altern8 6mo ago
Nice try, Nadella!
brcmthrowaway 6mo ago
How much is it?
karlitooo 6mo ago
maybe a different thing but trying to work with copilot as part of the microsoft apps (e.g. automation flows) feels like it has zero reasoning ability, just says the same thing over and over like a chatbot rather than LLM.
quantummagic 6mo ago
> Copilot is _amazing_. Do you mean Github Copilot? If not, which Copilot are you recommending? Can you give a link to where it can be purchased or trialed? I'm genuinely interested in trying out whatever you're recommending; but it highlights the problem, that I literally don't know what you're actually referencing.
fortran77 6mo ago
I don't know if you're kidding, but I agree with you. I use the Copilot CLI in VS Code and Visual Studio and it works better than anything else. I do use Claude models with it....
ex-aws-dude 6mo ago
I find a lot of devs I’ve worked with don’t even know about copilot CLI and just think copilot is the VS plugin Due to microsoft’s confusing naming

rdsubhas 6mo ago

Blame brain dead product managers who merely want to hoist their poor quality yearly performance review slop on something existing that carries SEO/SEM value. Most of the time, these piggy backers only pull down the value of what they're riding on.

chatmasta 6mo ago

Related: a list of all Microsoft login portals (there are 609 of them). https://msportals.io/ https://msportals.io/

smallerize 6mo ago
At least some of those were from acquisitions. All the Copilots are their own fault.
fortran77 6mo ago
These drive my password manager nuts, especially when there are actually different logins for them. I just put a note in it saying exactly what service it's for.
stackghost 6mo ago
Holy shit. What the hell is Kevin Scott (Microslop's CTO) doing with his time? How can any reasonable leader look at this disaster and go "hmm, yes, this looks like a sane and sustainable setup for future growth"?
cranium 6mo ago
For a client I had to use "Windows App" to connect remotely to their cloud machine – and finding the app was the easy part.

schappim 6mo ago

Microsoft is not alone in this. Apple does the same thing! There is Siri on iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, Apple TV, and CarPlay and are all different different incarnation of Siri (with different capabilities). Then there is everything else like the Siri Remote, Siri Suggestions (and all their types: Siri apps suggestions, Maps, keyboard, Share Sheet, etc), Siri Shortcuts, and Siri Knowledge (WolframAlpha + Wikipedia + other databases?). I'm sure 75% of these will be rebranded "Apple Intelligence" by the end of the year...

flexagoon 6mo ago
Idk, at least in Apple's case it all refers to a voice assistant and some of the features integrated with it. If they were like MS, they would add Siri into everything and then call it "Siri Cloud", "Siri Messages", etc (if they were even more like MS, iMessage would be "Siri 365 Communication Suite")
- schappim 6mo ago
  These are all non talky talky: Siri Suggestions, Siri Knowledge (Safari / Spotlight Intelligence), Siri Shortcuts (Automation, not voice), Siri Intelligence (On-device ML features), Siri Widget/Watch face… you get the idea. There was a time when “Siri” was the catch all for Smart/ML.
- layer8 6mo ago
  It also refers to various "smart" suggestions that have nothing to do with the voice assistant: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-siri-suggestions-on-or-off-iph6f94af287/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-siri-suggestions... Nowadays Apple would brand such features as "Apple Intelligence", but since they already existed long before, they are "Siri". Though I agree that it's not quite as badly ubiquitous as Copilot.
- ryandrake 6mo ago
  > (if they were even more like MS, iMessage would be "Siri 365 Communication Suite") Siri 365 Communication Suite .NET Enterprise Edition With Copilot

Dwedit 6mo ago

I have personally nullified one of those, namely the Copilot Key. It took a low level keyboard hook, and blocking a specific sequence of keys, then injecting the right ctrl key back.

Traubenfuchs 6mo ago

How many of those are used regularly by more than 0.1% users?

firefoxd 6mo ago

Just this last week, I wrote about the confusion this creates in the workplace[0]. My coworker said "copilot" literally referring to any code assistant, the same way we say bandaid or kleenex. I thought he was talking about Copilot, the one I see nagging me on Microsoft teams. We had a full discussion about completely different tools without realizing it. [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/what-is-copilot-exactly https://idiallo.com/blog/what-is-copilot-exactly [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231

morkalork 6mo ago
What's fun is getting into the co-pilot comparison conversational because they are definitely not all equal. Co-pilot 365 is a donkey for one
- eterm 6mo ago
  I refuse to believe any are as bad as the Azure Portal one. It feels like pre-GPT levels of smart.

tedk-42 6mo ago

Microsoft slowly becoming the IBM of the 21st century.

ChicagoDave 6mo ago

If this isn’t an indictment of MS management (pun intended), I don’t know what is.

BikeRanger 6mo ago

We just call it Cope. Azure Cope. GitHub Cope. SharePoint Cope. Etc.

starkeeper 6mo ago

How many windows services or low level system dlls has Microsoft lost the source code for and or does not even know what they actually do? Copilot does not know either but I'm sure the answer is a much bigger number then anyone would be comfortable with.

claysmithr 6mo ago

I can't wait for Copilot Copilot for Copilot 365 X Copilot X

Tiereven 6mo ago

I guess if Copilot were actually a singular entity that had all of these touch points and a decent security model to prevent unintentionally exposing your data - it would be pretty cool.

mandeepj 6mo ago

It's not a product, but enablement or a feature! Just like a 'Pro' label :-)

nfw2 6mo ago

Is there a copilot for Microsoft flight simulator though?

paulddraper 6mo ago

> A few weeks ago, I tried to explain to someone what Microsoft Copilot is. I couldn’t It means Microsoft AI. Hope that helps!

senectus1 6mo ago

approximately the same number of products they have called "surface"

xyst 6mo ago

Microslop trying really hard to shove copilot shite down our throats

gucci_breakfast 6mo ago

What an absolutely ridiculous and deeply unserious organization

KnuthIsGod 6mo ago

Slop-Pilot for Copilot. One could argue that it is an oxymoron.

ampedcast 6mo ago

Was copilot branding restricted only to their AI products?

simonw 6mo ago

The thing that really confuses me about this is that it has very real negative consequences. I cannot have a conversation about Copilot! If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about. And if I ask them (which I always do) they still have trouble describing the product, because Microsoft give them no help at all. How DO you explain that something was the Copilot thing that's a feature on GitHub.com that shows up in the web interface there, as opposed to whatever the heck other forms of GitHub Copilot. (Amusingly there are 15 "GitHub Copilot..." products listed on the linked website and I can't tell which if any of those 15 corresponds to the chat UI on the logged in GitHub.com homepage, or that's available in the "Agents" tab in a repository.) Surely Microsoft feel this pain all the time? Bug reports in "Copilot" must be almost impossible to interpret.

whilenot-dev 6mo ago
That almost seems like a deliberate strategy by some "genius" PM... a lot less bug reports for specific products with actionable items for their teams, in favor of more insufficient reports to blame the one creating the report instead.
qxxx 6mo ago
at my workplace some of the devs are using github copilot (their own private account). Boss said that our company already has copilot and everyone can use it instead of private accounts.. it is enabled in our microsoft account. Of course, this is not what the devs need. Now I understand why this is so confusing, because there are many copilot products.
cmsefton 6mo ago
What are being called GitHub Copilot Products seems to confuse products with licensing plan and features. I always think of GitHub Copilot as the product. I can purchase the Business or Enterprise plan. That enables features like Reviews, Chat and so on. IMO this chart (at least for GitHub Copilot) is confusing products, features and licensing. That's not to say it isn't confusing understanding what features are available when you get a GitHub Copilot license, but calling them all Products feels wrong. I can't purchase GitHub Copilot Reviews separately as far as I'm aware.

ilovecake1984 6mo ago

It’s terrible, because a lot of the thing named copilot are not very good, which poisons the brand.

billforsternz 6mo ago

We should probably be grateful Microsoft didn't name it .NET

billforsternz 6mo ago

I remember Joel of Joel on Software publicly working through the process of creating a remote desktop for normals type product called Copilot back in the day. If I remember correctly he had to pay quite a pretty penny to acquire copilot.com. I wonder if MS Copilot meant he made money on that investment?

booleandilemma 6mo ago

I don't understand, usually Microsoft is so good at naming things!

cylemons 6mo ago

I guess Microsoft wants us to think about all these copilots as a single product. Like, "the copilot in visual studio", "the copilot on github", "the copilot on office" etc.

shykes 6mo ago

This pattern seems to repeat itself often in large tech companies. Does anyone remember SAP Hana?

triage8004 6mo ago

Windows is the harness for Copilot

jmorenoamor 6mo ago

I think they should start to think about having a pilot.

moezd 6mo ago

That's the point: If you receive a bug report about "Copilot" and it will take you forever to triage what's actually broken, then the ticket gets closed because it becomes stale eventually. Therefore you don't have a complaint anymore!

dwedge 6mo ago

Microsoft has always seemed to be a little chaotic and buggy in everything it did, but it was always dominant and assertive. Recently it seems like they might be about to do the impossible and throw away that market position - their cloud is imploding, they all but gave up on their AI goals, apparently the Windows UI is designed now by employees who use Macs so never use their own dog food, and while I don't believe all the people saying they'll move the Linux, I'm wondering what it takes for a few large businesses to make to the macbook Neo. At this point it's mostly 365 holding people in, and that's cross compatible

make3 6mo ago
gaming too I guess still
- zero_bias 6mo ago
  This won’t last for long too. Valve with SteamDeck and apparent future release of SteamMachine/SteamOS is preparing users for Linux gaming
  - hypercube33 6mo ago
    My consoles (Xbox and switch) are terrible at the basic thing like updates. My steam deck on the other hand does update all the time but I never notice and haven't ever picked it up off the dock and been stopped from playing a game because it needed to update something. I think they'll start eating everones lunch if they keep making it easier to use and if their 2026 products are good.
  - make3 6mo ago
    either that or AAA games mostly becoming streamed from Clouds like Nvidia now
    - pluc 6mo ago
      Google tried that and there's still some blood on the wall

aimadetools 6mo ago

[flagged]

CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago

Surely it's just a synonym for 'agent' or 'helper'.

faragon 6mo ago

"All your Copilot are belong to us"

leokennis 6mo ago

While Microsoft in general is a mess, this article is like saying: what even is “save”? Microsoft has 1286 save products! Save in Word, Save in Paint, Save in Notepad… Copilot means there’s a button/menu/command in the Microsoft app/site/tool that allows the user to pass whatever text/file/site/context/prompt is on the screen to the Copilot AI backend so it can summarize/transform/expand/explain it, and then have the user wait an inordinate amount of time for a mediocre response.

Heloseaa 6mo ago
I don’t think the comparison is fair. Some of the products presented here are named copilot themselves, or at least for some, copilot + the domain of the base product. It’s not just a functionality like saving. Which can get even messier in people’s head, since they will usually reference any product they use as to copilote, when they may be talking about different ones sometimes. For instance, my friends who uses teams or the 365 suit refer to copilot as the integrated AI tool within these softwares. When, as a SWE, where I hear about copilot, it usually refers to the coding assistant/AI code completion/agent tools for me.
siva7 6mo ago
That's a bad analogy you made. Copilot is a Product Platform, Save is a basic software function that even my grandma could explain what it does. You don't have to believe me, test it yourself: Let your grandma explain what save does in Microsoft Word or Excel. Then let her explain what Copilot does in Outlook, VSCode, Bing, Github Copilot, Bing, Sharepoint, Microsoft 365 and so on..
- LiamPowell 6mo ago
  > Microsoft 365 That's Microsoft 365 Copilot now actually.

wei03288 6mo ago

[dead]

tosti 6mo ago

So... That means all of those products are for entertainment purposes only. Truth in advertising!

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

ape4 6mo ago

Didn't they rename everything "dotnet" when that was the hot thing

amelius 6mo ago

And where is Microsoft Flight Attendant, I need a cup of coffee.

OJFord 6mo ago

I think it's fair enough that 'the assistant in the GUI/cloud program X, like Clippy++' has the same name for all X. But it's absolutely bonkers that that's the same name as the IDE auto-complete integration, and the GitHub agentic worker, and the GitHub chat, and the GitHub reviewer.

benatkin 6mo ago

Before any of these Copilots, there was Project Aardvark. It was a summer project by Joel Spolsky's company Fog Creek Software in which they created a remote desktop product called Copilot. They made a documentary about it: https://youtu.be/YbrkZ07LKbk?si=LAYznsR6Zd1YdGkb https://youtu.be/YbrkZ07LKbk?si=LAYznsR6Zd1YdGkb

uda 6mo ago

It's a corporate practice they find hard to shake, and sadly enough, it seems to work. The idea is about platform solutions vs. best of breed, and they keep betting on the platform. In big organizations with lengthy and complex contracting procedures, platform solutions will always win. The actual solution for the economy is Interoperability, if we fight for governments to require it, we can get platform providers that allow best of breed bundles. We will gain open market platforms, where you choose the market platform that works for you with the combination of solutions that work for you with one or just few contracts. Markets that close themselves or fight their vendors will lose both vendors and customers.

duxup 6mo ago

This reminds me of the old .NET marketing mess where everything was .NET

butz 6mo ago

Yes.

ajaimk 6mo ago

Is this more than Google's Hangouts?

eboy 6mo ago

[dead]

dsteel 6mo ago

The naming confusion points to a deeper problem. Everyone is building the "AI does a thing" layer (coding, writing, searching). It looks like no one is building the "AI things work together" layer. We run 14 AI agents. CrewAI, LangGraph, Google's 8 patterns... all solve how agents pass data to each other. None of them answer: which agent has authority over which domain? What happens when two agents disagree? Who owns the escalation path? Those are organizational problems, not technical ones. And organizational problems don't get solved by naming a product "Copilot."

thomasjudge 6mo ago

Related: (parody): if you haven't seen it, this is a critique - from microsofties I think - of MSFT product branding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

SashaVasilev 6mo ago

[dead]

fuckinpuppers 6mo ago

Too many. Rebranding Office 365 as Copilot 365 or whatever .. seriously?!? They already screwed up Outlook (having to ask people “do you open the outlook app on your desktop computer, or do you type outlook.com?” And still not getting a helpful answer back from non technical people SUCKS) Things people know that don’t need to be renamed: Windows Office Azure Xbox Bing GitHub LinkedIn adding a “Copilot” AI “buddy” to everything is a little confusing as-is, unless the end goal is for it to be a persistent buddy for the user no matter where they are at in the Microsoft ecosystem. But rebranding entire products is crazy

aimemobe 6mo ago

[flagged]

Suppafly 6mo ago

Microsoft always does this, they let their marketing drive the ship for some reason. Before copilot it was 365. Before that it renaming a bunch of stuff to .net.