Comment by gruez
6 days ago
>With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal
How does whatever microsoft is doing to windows line up with that?
Hmm, it does line up with that from my perspective too.
It's just a different way to say "you're the product, not the customer" if you look at the statement from a neutral perspective - the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.
>the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.
Who's the "whale" in this context? Windows users who subscribe to copilot? Enterprise? Advertisers?
Enterprise.
Enterprises are the whales. Microsoft sells user management, Office, Copilot, Outlook, etc... all bundled together for more per seat per year than a consumer will spend or generate in the whole lifecycle of their device. Nevermind Azure.
So consumers are mostly ignored, except as a testbed to shove AI and ads.
And based on historical trends, they are doing the clever thing. If there are enterprises today still running IBM mainframes, MS is probably right to expect that today's enterprise contracts will be paying off at least 40 years down the line -- especially when you factor in the motte of regulatory traps and labyrinthine compliance checks.
Yeah I can't blame them. Just as I can't blame Nvidia for ripping off the hyperscalers. It is terrible for consumers though.
The only positive is all the interest in Linux and software optimization though.