Comment by seec

I think you answer your own question: because it doesn't matter if they can sell it and still make a profit.

Microsoft has a lot of already existing clients and those clients (mostly) trust them. They don't need to do a lot of convincing or marketing/sales to get them to use just one more thing from them even if it is moderately useful. If they can manage to resell whatever the LLM makers have made and still generate a profit, that's all they really need. They can figure out later how to make their own version if that turns out to be profitable enough.

This is the same thing with the browser; there is not much money to be made from building/maintaining an engine in the end. But packaging an already existing one with their own UI and tools (and ads) that may make them money indirectly is a good enough approach.

The thing that impresses me the most about Microsoft is that they rarely come up with the best solution right away but they always manage to stick to the new stuff and work out over time the useful parts that will make money. It's quite ruthless but in the end it's good business and this is why they manage to stay relevant. Good old, "embrace, extend, extinguish" is quite effective indeed.