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Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

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Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#111

Post by rcarmo »

jukkan wrote: post #100
alirath wrote: post #70

In my limited experience using copilot at work, i think it has been a game changer for non-technical computer users. Many of my coworkers and i use it as the first attempt at research especially now that it is connected to SharePoint within my company and provides references to the documents it is pulling from. Saves hours for things like compiling international regulations or standards documentation. Additionally, i…

The recent Copilot search that was rolled out to replace the traditional M365 search is actually pretty good. When you use that search UI specifically. If only asking from Copilot in a chat, the results are less spectacular or reliable. That just shows how a chat UI isn't the best solution for everything. Yet taking the M365 Search terms as input for the LLM to translate into a query that doesn't require the user to…

Depends a lot on the context of a chat, since it will prioritize the app you’re in, etc.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#112

Post by hulitu »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #18

I perceive MS as just being in the "get people using it, accustomed to it, used to it, habituated to using it throughout their day" phase for the default free Win10/11 tier. That little copilot icon is sitting there in the task tray, clickable and usable. I think people will, to whatever degree makes sense for them, get used to making some use of the basic free tier. Monetization / restrictions requiring some degree…

> That little copilot icon is sitting there in the task tray, clickable and usable.

A thing that gets in the way is not usable, is annoying.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#113

Post by hulitu »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #54
blibble wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the generic public start associating all AI with the useless "Copilot" then Microsoft will succeed in killing off the entire AI industry

I think you'd be surprised at the number of average users who don't think of it as useless. As I've mentioned on comments elsewhere in this thread, remember what we here were talking about a couple years ago: LLM's killing websearch.

> LLM's killing websearch.

Websearch is dying since some more than 10 years. It was stabbed in the back by greed (ads, SEO). LLM is just the nail in the coffin.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#114

Post by fluidcruft »

dangus wrote: post #75
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem is that it doesn’t actually do anything." I disagree, and I think you'll see what I mean when you shift the frame of reference from "person working at a large company with Office 365 installed" to a couple hundred million average Joe's having access to it at home. Webs search is now a horrifying wasteland, and people know it. Remember the conversations we all had just a few years ago: LLM will replace we…

I’m just conveying my experience. Whatever copilot is at my company’s Microsoft portal seems to do absolutely nothing and connect to nothing. Even if this is my company not paying for the license, it seems like a pretty miserable way for Microsoft to try to tempt companies into buying one by delivering a completely useless “light” experience. Everything you’re describing that’s wonderful about the Windows copilot but…

I agree about this. It's very difficult to figure out. In fact my working theory is IT has banned it as much as they can (we get strange and difficult to interpret pronouncements about permission to use LLM).

Windows 11 in general pushes so much unwanted crap at us in ways that we can't control that it's reasonable to assume IT can't make the icons go away if they wanted to. And investing time building a workflow that disappears when IT has finally figured out how to nuke it (if that's the intent) isn't worth the risk.

For reference I work at a hospital so generally IT is extremely sensitive about potential breaches and leaks. In general the policy is we are allowed to use LLM. The organization is on Azure but I can't even find anyone in IT to tell me if we are even allowed to use Power platform (which is also in this weird state of letting you build things but they don't actually work). CoPilot is there ... ish. It's just not very powerful at all.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#115

Post by grandpoobah »

Too wrote: post #83

In true Microsoft spirit, they completely tanked the name. This was launched just shortly after GitHub Copilot was the hottest trend. Everyone associates Copilot with GitHub and think it's a developer-product, not an office-product. Changing the name of the entire Office suite into Copilot didn't make things better. Now you have no idea of knowing what you are really getting. Is Office Copilot? Is Copilot Office? Is…

MSN, .NET, Windows Live, Live... Microsoft can't help themselves when it comes to going all-in on new branding.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#117

Post by DecoPerson »

mrandish wrote: post #60

1.8% is terrible adoption, especially in light of MSFT hijacking the right-CTRL key of every Windows licensed PC to rename it "CoPilot" key. I'm thrilled that Copilot is sucking wind because their over-aggressive pushiness about CoPilot in Windows and Office has been annoying and wasted my time having to figure out how to disable it but the REAL reason I despise CoPilot is that while stealing a key on my laptop's key…

I agree. Making deals with laptop manufacturers to put their trademark on keyboards is an unhealthy-for-society abuse of their market power and should be treated as such in every jurisdiction that they trade in.

However, I've had no issue remapping it to the Context Menu key on the Chinese Lenovo Xiao Xin laptop I bought recently. It shows up in the PowerToys keyboard remapper tool as an F23 key. (Yes, there are more than 12 F key codes! I believe there is 24 in Windows.)

Other OSes will not even be able to say things like "Press your Copilot key to open FEDORA SEARCH" or whatever without being cease'n'desisted to high heaven.

Terrible.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#119

Post by p_ing »

jiggawatts wrote: post #99
p_ing wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Server 2025 included many AD changes that were non-cloud related. They're not actively killing it. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started...

Most of those are scalability / security improvements that are only relevant to fortune 500 sized megacorps. These are the kind of release notes you'd expect to see for a dying product on life support, used only by those few remaining customers that are too big and too invested in it to migrate away. Also, the Server 2025 release is the first one to change anything in Active Directory, the 2022 and 2019 versions had…

That's a weird take but you're entitled to it, of course; normally we see products die with zero improvements for many years. I'm well aware of the rel history of AD, but thanks for the re-education.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#120

Post by ryukoposting »

blibble wrote: post #44
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #18

I perceive MS as just being in the "get people using it, accustomed to it, used to it, habituated to using it throughout their day" phase for the default free Win10/11 tier. That little copilot icon is sitting there in the task tray, clickable and usable. I think people will, to whatever degree makes sense for them, get used to making some use of the basic free tier. Monetization / restrictions requiring some degree…

if the generic public start associating all AI with the useless "Copilot" then Microsoft will succeed in killing off the entire AI industry

Remember Cortana? Microsoft was eroding consumer trust in these chat-style "agent" tools before we even had a name for them.
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