They could have shipped a good product with all those billions they spent in reinventing Clippy.
I have this feeling that their bet was that all the Microsoft shops will jump on Copilot without looking at alternatives, so they did not really have to make it as good as their competition.
"good" is not important for software anymore, at least in the regular consumer market. Companies have discovered that people will just continue to accept subpar, unfinished and sometimes even partially-functioning software.
Well, now no one has to convince anyone to shell out for upgrades because everything is a subscription. What worked perfectly well can now get replaced out from under you overnight
Making good products was never Microsoft's MO. Even during the peak of the Nadella era, the good bits were side shows. Microsoft Office and Windows have always been things that succeed primarily via network effects/lock-in.
> They could have shipped a good product with all those billions they spent in reinventing Clippy.
I really liked Copilot - it gave you a lot of tokens across a bunch of models and their agentic features were perfectly serviceable, alongside it being really affordable! And then they moved over to usage based billing and it no longer has that advantage over the alternatives: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/github-copilo...
I still think they have a really good AI tab autocomplete implementation and it's nice to be able to use that in VSC without swapping to another editor altogether... but that's not enough to really make me pay for their subscription. I could probably move to Zed altogether if I had a problem with VSC itself, though at least the base editor doesn't feel like it has been enshittified and I quite like it, all things considered.
Microsoft continues to make billions in profit despite its spending on AI, because it has a diversified business that generates revenue. I don't get why they would be "scared"? It's basically a calibrated risk at that level.
Good products are not profitable enough. Not that good products are profitable at all, but if it doesn't make disgusting amounts of money this quarter it's not worth considering at all.
We've reached the phase of "infinite shareholder growth" where physics says no, and that is so unacceptable that we'd rather burn down the entire global economy than accept less than exponential growth. It isn't that growth is impossible either, there just can't be enough growth. Break-even is apparently a fate worse than death
> They invested billions. They're scared.
They could have shipped a good product with all those billions they spent in reinventing Clippy.
I have this feeling that their bet was that all the Microsoft shops will jump on Copilot without looking at alternatives, so they did not really have to make it as good as their competition.
"good" is not important for software anymore, at least in the regular consumer market. Companies have discovered that people will just continue to accept subpar, unfinished and sometimes even partially-functioning software.
"accept" is such a weird word for this, though I don't know of a better one in English.
What we seem to be experiencing is a combination of monopoly power/abuse, and regulatory/government/court capture to keep it in place.
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Well, now no one has to convince anyone to shell out for upgrades because everything is a subscription. What worked perfectly well can now get replaced out from under you overnight
Making good products simply no longer seems to be on the agenda for most of these companies.
Making good products was never Microsoft's MO. Even during the peak of the Nadella era, the good bits were side shows. Microsoft Office and Windows have always been things that succeed primarily via network effects/lock-in.
> They could have shipped a good product with all those billions they spent in reinventing Clippy.
I really liked Copilot - it gave you a lot of tokens across a bunch of models and their agentic features were perfectly serviceable, alongside it being really affordable! And then they moved over to usage based billing and it no longer has that advantage over the alternatives: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/github-copilo...
I still think they have a really good AI tab autocomplete implementation and it's nice to be able to use that in VSC without swapping to another editor altogether... but that's not enough to really make me pay for their subscription. I could probably move to Zed altogether if I had a problem with VSC itself, though at least the base editor doesn't feel like it has been enshittified and I quite like it, all things considered.
Microsoft continues to make billions in profit despite its spending on AI, because it has a diversified business that generates revenue. I don't get why they would be "scared"? It's basically a calibrated risk at that level.
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Good products are not profitable enough. Not that good products are profitable at all, but if it doesn't make disgusting amounts of money this quarter it's not worth considering at all.
We've reached the phase of "infinite shareholder growth" where physics says no, and that is so unacceptable that we'd rather burn down the entire global economy than accept less than exponential growth. It isn't that growth is impossible either, there just can't be enough growth. Break-even is apparently a fate worse than death
The formulas used for asset valuations blow up when growth turns negative.
> They could have shipped a good product with all those billions
They did. It's called Azure: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/microsoft-tops-wall-street-exp...
Not sure "good product" and "Azure" really belong in the same sentence.
Have you read this?
https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporize...
I know a few people who worked on Azure’s FedRAMP ATOs, and “good” is not a word I’ve ever heard them use.
That's largely a product of work in the 2010s. What's their next Azure? Clippy on steroids probably won't cut it.
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the cloud used because execs have already got a microsoft contract. (not to mention the fun licensing problem)
Good thing they are holding the economy at gunpoint.
And they aren't the only ones! The bubble might be reaching it's size limits
They invested billions. They can exit in 6 months if this thing stays afloat.
I don't think it's fear; it's greed.