Why?
Why is every company right now making it impossible to understand what their app does?
I swear to fucking god, I’ve been looking for SAAS products at work to fill a role, they’re all branded as AI and not what the companies actually fucking do.
Office has like a 40 year plus reputation as THE office suite. What the fuck us copilot? That cheap knockoff OpenAI they debuted before it was really?
Because AI on its own doesn’t actually make a return, but by conflating the AI investment with a genuine productivity tool that’s making money, you can start to hide your poor choices.
*Ding!*
Wow, you are right. This is a way for them to pump the bubble and their stock price up even more.
Pre AI: Hey, we have 5 billion subscribers to our office suite!
Start of AI: Hey, we have 5 billion subscribers to our office suite and 3 subscribers to our AI offering (currently in their free testing period, plans already precancelled)
Now: Hey, we have 5 billion subscribers to our AI services (that also features an office suite)
It’s almost like theyre desperate for a return on investment not realizing they got scammed by Altman.
seems like altman /ms/amazon and google are kinda scammed by nvidia, arnt they less likely to get away less scathed, also oracle.
Except Nvidia’s product works. It’s the shit software they decided they needed Nvidia’s product to run that kinda does something but not in a real world usable state, that’s the issue
they are trying hard to peddle it to govt usage since they are likely a guaranteed revenue stream, things like palintir is being peddle hard by thiel to multiple countries.(including israel and defense contracting)
It’s because when so much money/power has pushed so long for people to make decisions based on money and not logic, we’ve now arrived at the point where even “the emperor’s new clothes” type moments can’t rein in the insanity; executives are bonused off this garbage and most employees who do know better–thanks to orgs’ own internal propaganda and structures–have given up caring and just publish the garbage and clock out(as they should).
I think I know why. Microsoft Office was a product. Their new strategy is Services. They want you to lease their services and have vendor lock-in forever. It takes a long time for businesses to migrate.
This has MBA written all over it. The idea that AI can just do whatever the client needs means that you can say your service does it all!
It is a scam.
I think I know why. Microsoft Office was a product. Their new strategy is Services. They want you to lease their services and have vendor lock-in forever. It takes a long time for businesses to migrate.
They already did/do that and it’s called Office 365 and already have vendor lock-in with Windows, SSO services, Azure, etc
Yeah but this is an AI service. See it’s different! /s
It’s worth $30 more per year. Aka it’s a subscription rate hike.
They hiked up all of the subscriptions. Then made it confusing as fuck to subscribe back to the one that you had.
Oh my god! Let me get my checkbook
It’s going to fall apart and the industries using the tools are going to adopt a Unix philosophy of dedicated tools that do a specific job well. May take a Butlerian Jihad, but it will happen.
It’s already happening, in part because of this and in part because of the unstable, unpredictable US government.
Several European countries are looking towards investing in open source as a way to get away from American big tech because they’re suddenly considering US sanctions against them a real possibility, or at least a real threat.
I’ve seen people mention it elsewhere in this thread. But what is MBA? I get nothing relevant when I search for it.
Masters in Business Administration. The model by which all businesses have been run over the last century. The guide to late stage capitalism.
Gotcha, thanks.
Copilot is love, copilot is life. It’s okay friend - these are copilot times, but I still copilot you.
You forgot, “Copilot is mother, Copilot is father”. I suppose it’s an obscure reference now.
Did you copilot my wife!?
Copilot copilotted your Copilot. Something something marklar.
FWIW, Office (or more accurately, everything that was part of Office) was renamed Microsoft 365 years ago, in 2020. That was long before the AI insanity.
Microsoft 365 is a worse name than Microsoft Office.
Shouldn’t it be called Microsoft 250? There are 250 working days in a year. As soon as I’m home I’m using Thunderbird or Libreoffice, certainly not the product formerly known as Microsoft Office.
If they could have you in the office more than 250 days they absolutely would. I bet they’re thinking 365 days is the perfect amount.
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It’s not about the user.
(it’s about sounding innovative and cool with whichever trend to the brainless money people aka shareholders)
Why do I feel 2026 is gonna be a fucking nightmare…?
Pattern recognition
Extrapolation from the experience of previous years
As a south american, it’s already being a nightmare. I’ve been enduring a heat index of about 44 to 46ºC, and now the tension from the us invasion in a neighbor country
I’m sorry this is happening to you all. It’s wrong and shameful.
Because it already is.
I had that feeling just before new year.
These are actually my predictions for 2026 :
- More stupid AI integration into products, because money.
- More stupid geopolitcs and war.
because you’re not an ignorant dumbass
On the bright side, this change has been around for 9 months at least because they had already changed it when I was doing IT stuff at my last job and it was impossible to find where to actually download the office suite.
Ok so there are 3 microsoft products called copilot now. Surely this won’t confuse anyone
Here’s a list of types of Slopilot available for businesses https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/microsoft-365/which-copilot-for-your-organization
How the hell else are PMs going to get positive reviews this quarter? Waiting for Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Windows to all be called Copilot
It’s tradition. I think they have 4-5 different Teams now, too.
Microsoft is reporting over 600 MILLION user growth on copilot, basically overnight! Wow, very impressive Mr Nadella. You’ve truly pushed AI adoption forward. Someone get this man a bonus!
It’s been named “Microsoft Office” since 1990. Way to piss 35 years of brand recognition up a wall.
How drunk are these guys?
What’s funny is their attempts to rebrand Office have just fallen completely flat. Kind of reminds me of when Willis Group bought the naming rights to Sears Tower and all the Chicagoan’s were just collectively like, “Yeah, No. We’re still going to call it ‘Sears Tower’.” Hell, nobody that I know of calls it “Willis Tower.” Nobody calls Microsoft Office “Office 365”. Nobody is going to call it “Microsoft 365 Copilot.” This is just a huge waste of effort by a tech firm that has long since run out of ways to be innovative.
I would bet an absurd amount of money that Marketing people consulted Copilot.
“Let’s take the most recognizable software package name and make it something totally divorced from what the software is supposed to be for.”
There are probably people for whom Microsoft Office is the only desktop software that they use. There are probably many people in procurement that are going to scratch their heads and think twice about signing off on something that sounds like a flight simulator.
This is an opportunity for alternate office suites.
Its is almost universally the main reason that even a lot of Linux daily-drivers still have a windows install available to them. They fuck up Office enough and there isn’t a reason to even have Windows for most users.
That’s why they want you to put all your stuff in their dumb cloud, because its the only reason people would keep using this garbage, because they can hold your work ransom in their shitty ecosystem.
That is the whole business model of tech now. Stealing your shit and selling it back to you. That is it.
Who the fuck is dual booting for Office? You just made that up.
Literally everyone I know that runs a Linux desktop and also has a job.
They don’t just use office from the web, via Linux? You can access excel, word, …, all of that in a browser.
I would not shut down my PC and boot into windows just for office. I keep my Windows around because my wife prefers it (for now).
I’m not one of the dual booters mentioned, but the desktop version of Excel specifically has several important features that the online version flat out doesn’t support. Primarily I’m talking about creating and running data queries, which is useful for analyzing data and generating reports from remote data sources including external files like CSV and online databases. You can do all this without Excel of course, but this shows the online versions are definitely limited.
That’s fair. I’ve dealt with that before, and in my case I had to rebuild the damn thing for compatibility with the web version. When I did, I was able to use alternatives like Power Query M instead of VBA. This worked in my case, but I’m sure you’re right that some features just aren’t there in any capacity.
The external CSV thing is a PITA but you can (at least there) overcome it via adding a “landing sheet” for raw data. Nobody is going to want to deal with any of this, though.
Yeah I think I’d be more likely to use WinBoat or something similar to run a virtual machine rather than fully boot into Windows.
They don’t just use office from the web, via Linux? You can access excel, word, …, all of that in a browser.
Web office has barely any features compared to the desktop thing, iirc.
+1
office on the web sucks, lacks features, and basically defeats the purpose of using office at all
Well, IIRC there’s a flight simulator hidden somewhere in Excel
Edit: https://www.exceldemy.com/7-excel-easter-eggs-for-power-users/
For business, they’re locked into Excel, there is no substitute. I can see MS blowing out the remaining home users though.
Damn, our customers don’t use copilot, but we promised to reach 50% usage in 2026…
That’s it… Rename the whole thing to copilot and we achieve our goal!
Also they can release “Microsoft Office 365 Co-pilot app business plus pro platinum edition, with Azure” for 3x the price and no clear business distinction.
Platinum is worth less than gold now
Office is the last good branding Microsoft have and they’re just getting rid of it, I can’t believe it
Suicidally bad naming is the one thing we can always rely on Microsoft for
Introducing Microsoft Sepukku.
Good?
It’s godawful, to the point of being barely functional
My company runs on office and I write everything in Google drive, then export it to a word document and import it into office because working on office web is just a joke.
Seriously.
Sometimes it just randomly and quietly deletes some text I just typed
Sometimes it just changes layouts on other pages where I’m not even working
Sometimes it says it saved the work and it saved didly squat
I see Microsoft office as something that only “enterprise” level customers would be stupid enough to use and to pay actual money for.
They didn’t say it was a good product
yeah office used to just work (mostly, and ignoring the quirks), but this past year it’s been doing weird shit and generally been unreliable because of cloud sync behaviour for me
I’ve been writing a long work, using Office for web editing. Every so often in proofreading, I find spots where it looks like words were just missing. Now I feel like I may have some explanation…
Apparently word online will just st random drop pieces of text during saving.
Why?
Microsoft. That’s why
Maybe they hired the brand team from HBO.
you mean HBO Max? wait it’s Max now? No, it’s HBO. No, Max. No, HBO Max. The real seahorse emoji is…
Not to defend MS’s bullcrap, but their server OS are much better than their fucking aweful office.
Starting with WinNT back in the days.
Ah, yes, Windows NT.
I remember how this little operating system with a kernel invented by a Finnish dude and with no real corporate back almost completelly ate their market share in the server space back in the day (not that they’ve had a significant server market for long in between the end of the era of corporate Unixes like SunOS and the beginning of the era of Linux).
I actual did server-side development and just about every company I worked for in 2 decades and 3 countries had masses of Linux servers and if that much a handful of Windows servers, and that included all sized of company, from small ones to massive corporate behemoths - Linux was simple the best way to get the most use and performance out of your server hardware.
Whilst I haven’t been doing server side stuff for a few years, I’m actually surprised they still have any server market at all, since the only upside their server solutions have over Linux is perfect integration with their Desktop OS whilst all the rest are downsides.
I guess that they have some market share because basically their servers serve as glue between instances of to their Desktop OS in a network because of using closed protocols (i.e. a forced dependency on the desktop market rather than superior quality) whilst for any kind of generic computing they’re an inferior solution to even a free OS.
I didn’t mean to start a what’s-best-for-companies (as i really don’t care, i stopped working 30yrs ago and am doing server-stuff just for fun at home mostly), but just said that their server-OSs are tremendously better than their office-shit and their desktop-OSs. Since NT they surely matured a lot, also i’d argue that with 2019+ i fail to see the appeal anymore. Having said that, of my 15+ machines here, there are only 2 windows left and that is just for that decades-old-domain plus some essentials.
I totally agreed with that: their Server OS is superior to their Desktop OS.
I just think it’s mainly because their Desktop OS has fast enshittified after Windows 7 rather than because Windows server is actually all that great as a server OS.
In fact, thinking about it, one might even say that Windows Server is better than the Desktop version because it’s to a very great extent a Desktop OS (in terms of having things like having an a complex UI layer and set of support applications integrated) the very thing which is actually a large part of the reason why its an inferior server OS for typical server-side scenarios because there what you most value is maximum computing resources made available to the server applications (which tend to be heavy users of computing, memory, networking or a combination of those) and an integrated UI layer actually uses more of those just for the OS (both directly for its own work and indirectly from the added complexity of a bulkier OS resulting in less streamlined execution paths) making fewer resources available for the same hardware.
If you look at the Linux distros and distro variants for server deployment they are actually vastly inferior to the Windows OS Desktop - for starters because they’re command-line only, though nowadays there’s often web-based management interfaces which are still a much lighter option than a directly integrated UI layer - exactly because absent an intergrated UI layer, not adding the UI support on top via something like XWindows or Wyland on a server Linux distro actually makes them better for server tasks.
But you know the UI is optional in the recent server versions? Can all be done in console, for an added layer of security and less overhead. Way too late they included that, but still…
I did not know that.
Took them two decades but better late than never!
lol yes, but close. Since server 2008/2008R2 there is the “core”-option. Since 2016 even a nano-core, with just basic container-options and one cannot even login locally. Plus a ton of corpo-stuff that is already there, and “easily” to setup (the gui seems so simple, but it’s still just a do-it-quick-stuff in the front, most of the actual work is scripted/console anyway). I must admit I do have all MS-titles and -certificates and it often is as trivial as it seems. But still more trivial than doing the exact same thing in linux.
Despite not ever have cared for MS-licenses (except for back then, when i still ran the buisiness), i still choose linux most of the time as it’s still much less overhead for simple tasks than even the lightest of core-installations.
C Suite is in a cult.
Tons of Microsoft senior engineers have been resigning over this kinda shit.
Not getting fired or laid off, though that’s happening too… resigning.
Bill Gates himself has expressed significant dissapointment with where the company has gone and is going, thinks AI needs to be optional, its clearly not ready.
… Everyone hates this other than C Suite, who are either psychotically delusional, in an actual AI worshipping cult (you’d be surprised how many tech high ups are in one), or, they simply hate us and want us to die, want to be the overlords of whatever is left after they basically destroy modern civilization.
Peak Business Idiot behavior. They’re too fucking stupid and caught up in the hype to notice that everything is on fire and their businesses are failing. The Line may be going up, but the companies are going DOWN.
It’s happening at a lot of companies. Last year our C-suite cancelled some big IR&D projects (where we were designing real products that could actually be built and sold) in order to dump $300k/mo into renting a cloud AI infrastructure that none of the employees want or use.
The other day, my mother approached me about Office alternatives. Before she retired, she daily drove Office, but feels like it’s changed so much that learning a new program isn’t any more friction than keeping up with AI bullshit.
For consumer use, I don’t see much difference in Office and LibreOffice. For business, Excel is the killer app, can’t do without it, but individuals can adapt pretty easy.
Load LibreOffice on her machine and let her try it! Leave the defaults to open docs with Office so it doesn’t frustrate her.
Last time I used Excel extensively was in high school, and after using Google Sheets for many years, going back to Excel feels like nightmare. I don’t know how to explain it, but last time I needed it for something, it felt very frustrating to use.
My LibreOffice is still called LibreOffice.
Why couldn’t they just stick with Office… It’s 100% explanatory, short, and to the point.
365 never made sense to me. Is it supposed to represent the year? Like available 24/7 but instead it’s there for you 365 days of the year? And if that’s the case why the fuck would I care? It’s software, of course it’s available to me whenever I want. It’s not a 7/11 hotdog rotisserie.
I think it has to do with how often you pay for it. With Office, you just buy it, then you own it. With Office 365, you have to pay for it 365 days a year. You just never stop paying for it.
Then it should be renamed to Microsoft office -1 because I never started paying for for it.
They’re trying to selling sell the copilot part as a replacement for support and knowledgeable people.
I mean they already did it to office, selling it as a service and not software they’re just just trying to convince people to pay more to eliminate as much human use as possible.
I think at least. But I can’t be certain. But I feel like I am.
Funny thing is, I’m offhand compiling some Pros/Cons to Windows/Linux, and this has caused the topic of “Support” to completely swing. Used to be, if Windows fucked up, I could complain to Microsoft and they might put someone on a support call intended to fix it. Now, if my OS fucks up, Microsoft will blow me off and send me to a useless AI, while the community for my Linux distro has pros that may genuinely be willing to take some time out to figure out what’s wrong. (Not always a guarantee, but better than nothing)
We’re…never going to say any of that. It’s Microsoft 365, or 365 for short. Even that sounds stupid. Office is what people understand, 365 always requires explaining.
MS is so exhausting.
I’m still pissed off about Entra, what the hell does that mean?
Microsoft need to spend a less time renaming products with confusing names and more time fixing their applications so they actually run.
Entra is derived from the Latin intrare, meaning “to enter”, which makes sense for access management/id verification software tbh.
I’m guessing you typoed, but it is intrare
Intro intras intrat
I did.
This is the same culture that decided that X was a better name than Twitter. These people are so far removed from regular society that this idiotic shit actually makes sense to them
They don’t care what the peasants have to say.
No wait, we are the farm animals, not the peasants.
They care even less about what the animals have to make sounds about.
I don’t talk to people about MS Office or do not know anyone particular who primarily works in it. But when talks touches writing an essay, spreadsheets or presentation - nobody says “In 365 I do this”. It is always Word, Excel, Power Point. Nobody even unifies all these programs as 365. It always is Office. Baffles me why MS haven’t figured out that literally no one calls it 365.
Thank you, I’m saving this
No problem lol
Redmond just keeps getting dumber by the day. At least back when the business model was EEE they weren’t stupid, just evil. Now they’re both but even the evil part is nerfed by the stupid part.
