Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft reports $22.6B in Q4 revenue

techcrunch.com

1–10 of 97 posts

Re: Microsoft reports $22.6B in Q4 revenue

#4
> During today’s earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also noted that Windows 10 users have now asked Cortana 8 billion questions to date.

Not sure if this qualifies as an achievement. Too many questions would perhaps suggest that things aren't quite obvious.

Wish I had a Windows box to play around and see what Cortana looks like. A variant of Clippy?

Re: Microsoft reports $22.6B in Q4 revenue

#5
post #2

The headline is very confusing - "Microsoft beats Wall Street predictions with $22.6B revenue" would be a better choice.

Agreed. I spent several seconds wondering if there was either a subdivision of Microsoft or yet another overvalued start-up with the name of Street.

I guess in the latter case, the name would be Streetly or Streetr or something equally dumb.

Re: Microsoft reports $22.6B in Q4 revenue

#7
post #4

> During today’s earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also noted that Windows 10 users have now asked Cortana 8 billion questions to date. Not sure if this qualifies as an achievement. Too many questions would perhaps suggest that things aren't quite obvious. Wish I had a Windows box to play around and see what Cortana looks like. A variant of Clippy?

Cortana isn't a Windows help client, rather it is an intelligent assistant and search engine. To give you a very common example, you can ask Cortana about today's weather. So not sure how that is related to "things aren't quite obvious".

Re: Microsoft reports $22.6B in Q4 revenue

#8
post #4

> During today’s earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also noted that Windows 10 users have now asked Cortana 8 billion questions to date. Not sure if this qualifies as an achievement. Too many questions would perhaps suggest that things aren't quite obvious. Wish I had a Windows box to play around and see what Cortana looks like. A variant of Clippy?

> Not sure if this qualifies as an achievement. Too many questions would perhaps suggest that things aren't quite obvious.

> Wish I had a Windows box to play around and see what Cortana looks like. A variant of Clippy?

Your comment suggests that you don't know what Cortana is, so I'm not sure how you're coming to the conclusion that "Too many questions would perhaps suggest that things aren't quite obvious."

Cortana is a digital assistant, like Apple's Siri. Common queries could be things like "when's my next appointment," "what time is it in Tokyo," or "when's the next showing of Interstellar?" It doesn't reflect on Windows itself possibly being hard to use.

Re: Microsoft reports $22.6B in Q4 revenue

#9
I absolutely hate these confusing words. It is alongside of "surname" and "last name" -- why can't you just use "family name" and "given name".

While I understand an investor report needs to be precise the articles about it needs to use terms people understand. Like "this is how much money came in the doors" -- aka. income. I believe the word "revenue" is used for what a layperson would call "income" and "income" is also used but for something else.

And then good luck figuring out how much profit they made. I searched and this article alone http://phys.org/news/2016-07-microsoft-profit-year-big-loss.... puts it in easy-to-understand way right in the very first sentence:

> Microsoft said Tuesday it posted a profit of $3.1 billion in the just-ended quarter

Is that painful to write or what? Because noone else did.

Edit: for example, one could write "Microsoft have sold software and services for $22.6B and made a profit of $3.1B". That's easy. Also, I realize it's not perfect (because they also sold hardware and got money from IP deals) but it's not my task to come up with easy-to-understand phrasing and it only needs to be done once. It's just an example of how to use words that non-accountant people can understand.

Re: Microsoft reports $22.6B in Q4 revenue

#10
post #4

> During today’s earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also noted that Windows 10 users have now asked Cortana 8 billion questions to date. Not sure if this qualifies as an achievement. Too many questions would perhaps suggest that things aren't quite obvious. Wish I had a Windows box to play around and see what Cortana looks like. A variant of Clippy?

7+ billion of which are probably - How the $#%$ to turn that $#$% off?

They are terrible imo. Cortana (and any other cloud "service") are the first things turned off on any windows install.

Post reply on HN