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Comment by ulrikrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely thought this was a joke when I saw the headline, and I had to double check the domain name to verify that this wasn't a parody.

Apart from being absolutely abysmal marketing, the front page alone is wildly inconsistent:

* "Welcome to Microsoft 365 Copilot"

* "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) [...]"

* "Microsoft 365 (formerly Microsoft Office 365) is a subscription service [...]"

Which is it, "Microsoft 365 Copilot", "(The) Microsoft 365 Copilot app", "(The) Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office)", "Microsoft 365" or "Microsoft 365 (formerly Microsoft Office 365)"?

I think Microsoft delegated all marketing decisions to AI. Not even joking.

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IIRC one point Microsoft had a marketing campaign where they associated everything with ".NET" and nobody could explain exactly what ".NET" even was.

Here we go with Copilot.

Oh I remember. For those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_.NET_strategy

It wasn’t during that exact period, but at some point they even let you create @dot.net e-mail addresses. I nabbed one and was happy for the vanity of it all, but they mysteriously unplugged them maybe two or three years later.

dot dot net, amazing.

Also the brief foray into "Live" https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Windows_Live

They include the "formerly..." to hilariously try to not confuse people (not joking).

They did the same when they rebranded Azure Active Directory and moved it into the Entra family of security products. It's now fully called: Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory)

I hope every publication uses Microsoft Copilot (formerly Office) for years, like they did for X (formerly Twitter).

Some of us are likely never going to stop referring to it as twitter.

X, may as well be 3 Xs.

I still call it Twitter... I just don't think "X" works nearly as well in conversation.

Xitter.

As in the Chinese X. Remember how their leader's name is pronounced.

At least in writing you can use [insert double-stroke X here - which HN can’t display] to make it clear that you mean the social media service. (Unless you’re talking to mathematicians.)

I still always go on the site using twitter.com domain or search.

rotting corpse, formerly microsoft.

"The office suite formerly known as Office".

Did OpenOffice or Kingsoft put them up to this?

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince

Prince changed his name because a corporation had refused to give him control over the work he created, and wouldn't let him release work under the name that he was born with. (Sort of the template for "Taylor's Version" decades later.) And he then used a logo that became the most successful personal logo of all time, not a mishmash of design-by-committee.

So, basically the _opposite_ of an incoherent brand based around training on content that was gathered from creators without consent, being foisted onto employees who didn't ask for it, with an ugly logo that nobody will ever remember.

Moral: don't come for Prince or Anil will come for you :)

And Azure Active Directory was formerly known as Active Directory Federation Services, and it was more compliant with SAML 2.0. The update broke some integrations with 3rd party SAML service providers.

Microsoft -> Microslop -> Megaslop.

So many things have happened in the last 12 months that made reality indistinguishable from satire. This is Megaslop making their best effort to win the prize in that category.

Also, never trust a statistic you haven’t faked yourself: Now Megaslop can claim a drastic surge in the number of “Copilot” users.

Microsoft™ 365™ Copilot™ App™ Home™ Business™ Edition™ Premium™

For Teams

Essentials

(sorry for the sh*tpost this naming thing is hilarious.)

Formerly known as Lynx

For Business

and pleasure

For workgroups

(formerly Office)

(recently filed for bankrupcy)

Microsoft might just be the first company run by an LLM. At least I couldn't tell the difference anymore. What an incredible joke.

"Run by an LLM" as in the LLM makes all these decisions, or as in people kneel at the altar of the sacred LLM, trying to come up with all these new ways of appeasing it? Because to me it feels like the latter, I don't think you could even finesse an LLM into coming up with this. This kind of an intentional, ideological, self-inflicted misstep feels like it could only be done by a human.

It is a joke. Microsoft is the joke.

> I think Microsoft delegated all marketing decisions to AI. Not even joking.

I actually think AI would have done a better job of this. And Microsoft being atrocious at branding predates AI mass adoption by about 2 decades, arguably more.

Microsoft used to just name a lot of things for what they did... to a point where it was almost confusing by itself. "Microsoft SQL Server" being a prominent example.

Though, the everything .Net around 2000 was nearly as bad as this CoPilot rename.

.net, dynamics, power, 365, azure, fabric, copilot.

There's always some pointless name change going on.

COM, OLE, ActiveX

I think it misses a .net in the end. Oh wait, this naming mistake they already made like 25 years ago. Funny how their learnt nothing out of their own mistakes.

Today their CEO released a statement that people should focus not on AI but on the uses of AI. So put the AI in the back and focus on the benefits. This is the exact opposite.

At least when it was Office.net it still had the word "Office" in it!

> Today their CEO released a statement that people should focus not on AI but on the uses of AI.

So they shouldn't focus. AI is so bad that it is useless. Microsoft is trying hard to destroy its user base and, maybe, with the EU pushing for local solutions, they may succeed.

there's even an M365 hanging around in the article :facepalm:

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