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Comment by lateforwork | Hacker News Reader

Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI. How many products have Copilot? Just about all of them.

> Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI.

This comment really helps me put things in perspective.

I'm guess now that it's Microsoft's way of naming their LLM-powered products/features, the same way "Azure" is basically their codename for "cloud".

I’ve absolutely seen adverts on TV in the UK by Microsoft advertising Microsoft Cloud. Azure was not mentioned anywhere…

Maybe that's because they don't want people who've never heard of Azure to just let it blend into the wide spectrum of cloud products whereas Microsoft is something almost everyone would recognize.

Except they named their local hosted version of TFS/VSTS Azure DevOps Server (where the cloud version is Azure DevOps Services).

They just like branding their dev tools for whatever they're pushing at the time. In 2002 they named Visual Studio "Visual Studio .NET".

That's because TFS/VSTS followed the same naming convention where the "S" stood for either Server or Services. Once they rebranded the Azure-backed hosted version Azure DevOps Services, then it no longer really made sense to do anything but rename the self hosted version in the same fashion.

It would have been more confusing to have Visual Studio Team Server and Azure DevOps Services being the same product but hosted differently.

Not just developer tools, reusing trademarks in general.

At one point the next version of Windows Server 2003 was going to be Windows .NET Server.

Also Windows CE, Outlook Express, Xbox App, Xbox Game Pass for PC, Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio for Mac, Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office Word, etc.

There is no perfect pasta sauce.

Only perfect pasta sauces.

Howard R. Moskowitz is an American market researcher and psychophysicist. He is known for the detailed study he made of the types of spaghetti sauce and horizontal segmentation. By providing a large number of options for consumers, Moskowitz pioneered the idea of intermarket variability as applied to the food industry.

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

As everything is grouped under cloud and ai at Microsoft, Azure means now basically anything produced by Microsoft.

It makes sense. And Google is its own way to name all AI products “Gemini”.

Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the product lines.

Next year they will introduce "hAIngouts" as an AI chat bot.

Ouch. Maybe "Google wAIve" for collaborative chats.

> Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the product lines.

I think they were lucky this time that they landed a good name after only a few iterations that has since stuck.

Anyone remember Google Bard or LaMDA?

The r/Bard subreddit is still quite active for some reason. Reminds me of Google Glass.

I still like the name Bard

Didn't it start as Bard?

Well it depends on what you're talking about. The model names were originally called lambda, followed by palm and then finally gemini. The chatbot product was internally known as meena, launched as Bard, and then transitioned to Gemini once the Gemini model came out.

They’ve improved it since the initial launch when the service, model names and plan names all sounded similar and contradictory.

there is vertex ai, notebooklm, antigravity, nano banana, veo, lyria, the open models are gemma and gato

But they put Gemini in google docs, they didn’t rename Docs to Gemini like Microsoft did.

And IBM has "Watson"

SAP sales reps used HANA for "cloud" in the beginning... Which was bs back then and is today. But while everybody wanted to be in the cloud, SAP sales was scared to not be with the cool kids, when they do not somehow add to the cloud talk

And Silly has Silly!

It doesn’t make sense. Google has a least its own LLMs, MS just uses others. So Copilot could be OpenAI or Anthropic.

At work we have licenses for Copilot and Copilot but not Copilot and everyone gets Copilot but only some get Copilot.

Probably will use other astrology terms. Like the way android is named for desserts.

Google Scorpio will be their best model yet, except sometimes it will say things that cut you to the core.

It most certainly isn't astrology that was on Google's mind when they decided for Gemini.

Made me curious enough to look it up...

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/google-gemini...

I think they'll more likely launch competing AI projects like 'Aquarius' and 'Doh' or something

Great point. We’re about to get a wave of Apple Products with “Apple Intelligence” in a similar way.

I don’t think we’ll see Apple actually rename all their apps over it. It’s simply a feature, it doesn’t change what the app is.

Also, Apple tends to make system services that are implemented once and work across all apps I the OS, like with their writing tools. The app didn’t change, it can just take advantage of a new system level feature… and so can 3rd party apps.

If they ever get Apple Intelligent going.

Does Office exist or not? I thought it was rebranded to Copilot365

Is it in solitaire or minesweeper?

Be careful what you wish for

I wish for the original solitaire to come back.

I use win95 emulator in the browser to play it.

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft Flight Copilot for airline pilots!

Microsoft should add a new game to Windows to accustom Windows users to Copilot.

There's a restrictions on games with even simulated gambling

Just what we need...AI agents that will play our games for us!

Didn't they kill those?

A product doesn’t have to have every feature baked into the name.

They could simply have marketing that talked about “<product name>, now with Copilot”. Eventually the marking moves on to the next thing, Microsoft products already became synonymous with Copilot/AI due to the marking and general use, and the names stay clean and consistent over time.

Yeah imagine if they had unique product names for "AI in OneDrive", "AI in SharePoint", "AI in Outlook"... That would be even more ridiculous.

I think this is the right answer. I am frustrated by Copilot and by many aspects of AI, but to me it seems like straightforward branding: you use a Microsoft product, you want to use AI in it, you look for Copilot (name and/or icon).

To me, the issue isn't that they've named so many things 'Copilot' but rather that Copilot is in every goddamn product.

You are the second person that implies that "Copilot" is just a complement that identifies part of some software...

Microsoft has been replacing most of their brands by Copilot. There's no searching for it in a product, the product is named "Copilot".

Not if AI is ultimately a commodity, which it likely is. We don't want or need branded terms for other common features, like networking or files. In the early days of networking, before it was standard, there were attempts to brand things like NetBIOS with IPX and such. I don't want to repeat all of that every time some company wants to establish vendor lockin or branding.

Naming all your products with X because it uses some fashion of X is certainly a choice.

I think Satya has lost the thread, even in a CEO context.

Elon Musk's ears are burning.

No, it’s also the official name of Microsoft Office. That moniker is no more. Office is Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Too bad that different products have different licensing.

So I have to license a certain Copilot not just AI.

Do we have Copilot? Yes and no.

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