[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46148748
Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
31–40 of 385 posts
Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#32Microsoft'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.
Microsoft’s best pitch (and Google benefits from this too) is that contracts are annoying and take forever to execute. If you can sign a deal for Outlook and Teams it’s so much easier than separate contracts for Outlook and Slack. You’ll get very far with that logic alone.
Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#33Microsoft'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.
> And somehow, they have figured out how to do it too
You say this like it was a mystery to start with. When you own 90+% of the user base, you can create trends with any changes implemented
Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#34Microsoft'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.
I find it fascinating how they are able to sell their crap software.
My theory is that they deliberately make Windows so shit to filter out anyone with taste. Once you have a userbase of people who don't know better, you can sell them any old crap. Like Teams.
Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#35Microsoft'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.
I find it fascinating how they are able to sell their crap software.
It's the oldest trick in the IT book - focus on the buyer persona and ignore the user persona.
Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as companies, and consumers, still pick Windows and Office, then why spend the resources. Making Windows better won't move the sales number significantly, but removing the ads and the potential AI upsell is a direct hit to revenue. The sad reality seems to be that Microsoft do not care about the majority of their products anymore. Only Azure, Microsoft 365 CoPilot, CoPilot and maybe CoPilot.
I'm not familiar with many "consumers" who still pick a Windows and Office, and in this generation, there are very few consumers picking xbox. Outside of enterprises, they seem to be losing market share everywhere, and at this rate they'll be akin to IBM or Oracle in a few years.
Office is part of the "Productivity and Business Processes" at Microsoft. That business unit had $120B of revenue in 2025.
Microsoft 365, which I believe includes Office, makes up $95B of that amount, which is split between Commercial (92%) and Consumer (8%)
From there you can see why they're focused on Enterprise.
Source: https://www.bamsec.com/filing/95017025100235?cik=789019 (page 39)
Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#37Their copilot stuff is such a mess. Over promising, dressed with marketing slop on top of an under-performing product. However; their azure offerings are somewhat decent. AI Search is getting quite decent, access to Open AI models served through foundry is quite the differentiator (although the rate limits are an issue), their reference architectures are very helpful and their ancillary services, like document intell…
> Their stuff is such a mess. Over promising, dressed with marketing slop on top of an under-performing product.
Updated as it was almost close to being a generic comment about AI overall.
Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#38I 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.
To be pedantic, IBM is a service company
Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#39Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
#40I 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…
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 not what the stock market is currently focused on. So, Microsoft is doing what they need to do to sell their primary product: shove AI into everything.