How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'? • Hacker News Board

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#51

Post by ValentineC » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

lateforwork wrote: post #14

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

> Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI.

This comment really helps me put things in perspective.

I'm guess now that it's Microsoft's way of naming their LLM-powered products/features, the same way "Azure" is basically their codename for "cloud".

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#52

Post by auselen » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

pcurve wrote: post #45

quag wrote: post #10

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

And “one” like most Fortune 500 companies.

one.copilot.net

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#53

Post by bdangubic » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

BirAdam wrote: post #40

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.

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 :)

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#54

Post by darkwater » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #2

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

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.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#55

Post by ValentineC » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #50

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" /…

> "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.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#56

Post by shireboy » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

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.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#57

Post by rr808 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

BirAdam wrote: post #40

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.

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.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#58

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

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

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#59

Post by lpcvoid » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

bdangubic wrote: post #53

BirAdam wrote: post #40

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.

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 :)

Nah, especially in technology it's very easy to avoid Microslop. I've done it successfully for many, many years.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#60

Post by chatmasta » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

ethmarks wrote: post #33

giancarlostoro wrote: post #4

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.

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…

And let’s not forget that Visual Studio Code (the IDE) is not Visual Studio (the IDE).