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Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

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Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#141

Post by htrp »

dboreham wrote: post #90
this_user wrote: post #9

Microsoft's entire business model for decades has been to shove shoddy products down people's throats. And somehow, they have figured out how to do it too, because otherwise Teams wouldn't be used by anyone.

People here are mostly too young to remember but the original Microsoft business model was this: Find a software market currently addressed by high price products; create a reasonably good product for that market; sell it for significantly less than the incumbent. Sell much higher volume of said product than the incumbent, thereby make much more profit. Repeat/rinse. The Windows lock-in, embrace extend etc came after…

>the original Microsoft business model

From 1981

>Microsoft, which needed an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer,[9][10] hired Tim Paterson in May 1981 and bought 86-DOS 1.10 for US$25,000 that July

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#142

Post by wolvesechoes »

graemep wrote: post #109
zem wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not the idea of capitalism; the idea of capitalism is that you should be able to make money by virtue of owning stuff. it's an inherently rich-get-richer scheme, competition has little to do with it.

I think its obvious the GP means free market capitalism, which is what almost everyone who favours capitalism thinks is the form it should take.

And these people has audacity to proclaim that socialism is based on fantasy.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#144

Post by MrMorden »

morkalork wrote: post #38
jacquesm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they so much want to be a service business than a software business. Microsoft execs are losing sleep over becoming the next IBM, not realizing they are already there and have been for a long time. Their main problem is that they never really learned how to compete on merit, just on first-to-market and all kinds of legal (and illegal) tricks.

To be pedantic, IBM is a service company

And IBM could have been AWS a decade earlier had they so chose.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#145

Post by thinkling »

btbuildem wrote: post #131

> FirstPageSage AI Chatbot Usage Chart (December 3, 2025) What a bizarre way to organize the chart. Clearly Anthropic is leading -- their early bet on "programming" as the main use case is paying off. The recent report from Openrouter [1] confirms as much: coding is the number one use case, with role playing / fantasy writing in second place. I have a feeling the remaining use cases will never dominate, instead they…

Claude Code usage probably isn't counted as "chatbot" use. Also, I think you're overestimating how many people program vs. how many people are using AI chatbots as the new websearch. Orders of magnitude more of the latter.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#146

Post by graemep »

zem wrote: post #129
graemep wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its obvious the GP means free market capitalism, which is what almost everyone who favours capitalism thinks is the form it should take.

I don't see how free market capitalism fixes that. I looked up a definition to make sure I wasn't missing something and as per investopedia: "The term “free market capitalism” refers to an economy that puts no or minimal barriers in the way of privately owned businesses. Matters such as worker rights, environmental protection, and product safety will be addressed by businesses as the marketplace demands." it's basica…

That is a bad definition and I cannot find it on investopedia. it is essentially an extreme libertarian spin on the definition.

There are better definitions on both wikipedia and Britannica:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market_capitalism

https://www.britannica.com/money/free-market

Especially this hit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market_capitalism#Concept...

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#147

Post by darknavi »

pseudosavant wrote: post #99

I was hoping for a real look at weaknesses in Microsoft’s AI products. They ship lots of “AI features,” but only Copilot and Azure’s ChatGPT hosting see broad use. Instead, the article mostly reads as anti-MS/OpenAI without much detail. From my experience, Microsoft’s GPT-5 integrations in Word, PowerPoint, and their ChatGPT clone struggle with basic tasks. Copy/pasting from ChatGPT still works better. To be fair, bu…

> Copy/pasting from ChatGPT still works better.

Side tangent: Copy/pasting from the Windows Copilot app is absolute dogshit. It makes no sense that the simple action of "copy this text" is this broken.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#148

Post by _DeadFred_ »

watwut wrote: post #52
coldpie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a public company. That means their primary product is not products or services, it's their stock. Selling products & services can be an advertisement for their stock, but there are other methods of convincing people to buy their stock, too. Currently the stock market only wants stocks that have "AI" associated with them. It doesn't matter whether users like it or not, because having a viable business is…

That is not what stock market is. A company does not have to focus on stock price and stock price is not its primary product.

Name a major U.S. public company in recent years that has consistently prioritized improving its product over boosting short term stock price or extracting maximum profits. If capitalism were truly a healthy system about building strong products to create healthy markets, this should be the norm (and enshitification shunned), not the exception.

What we actually see is a system of chartered extraction. Corporate executives are like Norman lords, granted their 'title' (CEO of instead of Earl of) by shareholders (rather than a king) in return for which both are/were expected to extract maximum value by any means necessary. Extractive tactics often at the expense of long-term product strength are behaviors shareholders expect if the CEO is to keep their bestowed 'title'.

Don't forget the progenitor joint stock company The East India Company, Capitalism in it's purest form without government restriction. Profit-maximizing, absentee extraction, with company executives serving as quasi-feudal lords over assets and people. Modern corporate capitalism is hard to distinguish, in its structure,history, behavior, and incentives, from the Norman extraction system, it's just dressed in a more politically palatable wrapper and forced to mellow out from it's desired East India Company style final form.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#150

Post by toomuchtodo »

jacquesm wrote: post #14
neilalexander wrote: post #10

I would think that if they actually spent the time and money fixing the core functionality of their core products (like Windows and Office) that they might have a much easier time promoting things like Copilot. Instead they leave their users wondering why they're so hell-bent on shoehorning AI into a Start menu that takes whole seconds longer to open than it should or into Windows Search that regularly fails to find…

Because they so much want to be a service business than a software business. Microsoft execs are losing sleep over becoming the next IBM, not realizing they are already there and have been for a long time. Their main problem is that they never really learned how to compete on merit, just on first-to-market and all kinds of legal (and illegal) tricks.

I’m actually somewhat stoked about generative AI from a “good enough” perspective, because at this inflection point where a lot of countries and organizations are looking for Microsoft alternatives (digital sovereignty, etc), this is the best time to be able to build and deploy alternatives with the productivity advantages (if any) AI might provide.

Big Tech thinks they have a moat, when it’s really diffuse power being made available via genAI to build software good enough to replace them.

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