Nah, it hasn't changed. It's garbage.
All of big tech is really worried about this.
If the AI boom is a dud, I can see many of these companies reducing their output further. If someone comes along and competes in their primary offering, there's a real concern that they'll lose ground in ways that were unthinkable mere years ago. Someone could legitimately challenge Google on search right now, and someone could build a cheap shop that doesn't sell Chinese tat and uses local suppliers to compete with Amazon. Tech really shat the bed during the last economic downturn.
Meta is struggling a lot less, probably because they were smart enough to lay off in one go,
or more like their user experience was already so garbage, adding AI to it doesn't make any noticeable change lol
I don't use a single Meta product on purpose. I'm sure they scrape my data despite my best efforts to not be tracked online.
I still unfortunately order things from Amazon for the convenience, use Windows for gaming and at work, and occasionally use Google search with heavy boolean search, custom search engines, and browser extensions for filtering out the garbage. I also still use Google Maps and I have an Android based tv where I occasionally watch SmartTube.
Hell I even get Netflix included with my T-Mobile subscription. My wife watches that.
And for now, I have an iPhone SE until it dies and I make the switch to a Google phone or something.
Typing this out makes me wonder what I'm waiting for to find alternatives for this FAANG garbage, but I have no idea how Facebook still exists.
Monopolies don't care about the user experience, only profit. The AI doesnt understand the former, only the latter. The continued degredation of the user experience is a likely indicator of an increase in revenue as function of successful application of AI.
The AI doesnt understand the former, only the latter.
Do you possibly mean "The AI evangelists" or something similar?
Like, I could totally understand it in the "software will also include the biases of those who wrote it" kind of way (a la Amazon's failed attempt at automating job candidate search). If the only incentive you're given as a programmer is "make it make money", then yeah, your AI is going to bias towards that end.
Just couldn't tell on first reading
Google has let AI divisions take over both search
I fucking bing'd something the other day to get a better search result. What the fuck google.
I'm not sure there could be any sort of legitimate threat to them, but I could definitely see a Netflix situation playing out. That is a popular upstart temporarily seems poised to take over, but then suffers from extreme levels of interference from bigger players who artificially hold the upstart down while they desperately catch up and then ultimately come at least equal while the Netflix equivalent is mostly a shell of what it could've been.
Never underestimate how much buckets and buckets of cash reserves can overcome even incredibly out of touch laziness when it comes to competing with any start ups. Apple in particular could probably afford to let competitors get a decade ahead and still be able to come back based on the ridiculous amount of cash they have to float their business along with.
Someone could legitimately challenge Google on search right now
Not really, unfortunately, because of the sheer mass of the internet the infrastructure to just support the index of it requires massive funding. Even other giants like MS with Bing struggled with this. Short of a radical new way to run a search engine without a massive index, I just don't see it happening.
If the AI boom is a dud,
Whaddya mean, "if"? Emperor wears no clothes...
I work at a big EU company, MS top partner / strategic account etc. We wanted to implement MS Dynamics CRM in one of our newer business lines, we barely got a reply to our official emails.
After some informal discussions, we were told that salespeople are now only incentivized to sell Copilot, so they don’t really bother with the rest.
If MS is overinvesting to ride the AI hype as a middle man, while letting their core business capabilities (Windows and Office) decline, they will be in trouble in the long term.
To be fair, you can be their Platinum Ultra Tier Level Partner or whatever, and they'll still not reply to you for a week. And when you get the reply it looks like it was written by ChatGPT anyway, and says nothing.
They are purposely enshittifying windows already, they don’t give a shit about making a functional OS anymore and are in the milking their products for all their worth phase and right now Ai is the hot seller.
Hopefully they will be so shortsighted and suffocate themselves with this Ai hype.
Hopefully they will be so shortsighted and suffocate themselves with this Ai hype.
waves from over in the linux corner seize the day, and microsoft's throat :P
Just installed Linux Mint the first time last month. Been very much enjoying the experience of a M$ free OS.
Hell yeah, it is so much easier than it used to be right?
How was your experience?
Any tips for someone who might be about to do the same?
Did you create a ritual pyre of Microsoft jewel cases and old manuals and stuff and burn it while dancing around it chanting burnnn babyyy burnnn?
They see the post-PC world, and Windows Phone never panned out.
Windows Phone was never given a chance to pan out. There wasn’t space for Windows Phone to force its way on the scene when it finally began to fire on all cylinders as a smartphone OS but they were building a critical mass of loyal users that would have set up Microsoft longterm to successfully exploit the opportunity to when it came.
It is wild to me that upper management at Microsoft was too dumb to understand that and just killed their perfectly good apparatus for gaining a foothold on the mobile market. Simply put a tech company that large should always be thinking seriously about maintaining a practical entrance to an industry as important to their bottom line as this.
They are fools and they ultimately threw mud in the face of the small amount of windows phone fans (of which there definitely were loyal fans especially for the great Nokia cameras and extremely focused UI) who could have delivered that initial burst of energy and excitement/growth when the opportunity eventually did come. Thus they have actually sealed and barricaded the door to Microsoft ever EVER being in the mobile space since they betrayed ALL of the early adopter nerds who would have stuck around for the rough beginning.
Windows actually aren't a very big share of their revenue, but Office is yeah.
It's kind of crazy to me that their AI product is already 50% of the revenue of their OS product. The thing that a stupidly high amount of computers require to even function for most people.
Wow you just shined a ton of light on a problem my company had. We wanted to implement a medical imaging system from one of their subsidiaries, and it took an average of 3 months for the salesperson to respond to EACH of our emails
Sounds like a really good opportunity for competitors to sweep in and start attacking
I am stuck with Windows 10 & 11 at work, on multiple various machines. Also some versions of Windows Server.
It honestly feels hostile towards the user now. For myriad reasons. It's a constant battle for me to turn pointless crap off that it keeps turning back on with the next big update.
Linux is waiting for you. You know you want it.
I realize gaming on Linux is already very doable (I have a steam deck), but for me specifically, I need the majority of the mod developers to have shifted over to Linux gaming before I can switch. I primarily play games that tend to be heavily modded and it's really common to need to run some sort of 3rd party tool to mod. One that is often not Linux compatible. I realize there are utilities that can sometimes help with this, but between extremely spotty mod documentation and my own lack of familiarity with Linux, that kind a tricky ask for me to accomplish. I've pretty much given up on playing modded games on my steam deck for now. I hope someday most of the gaming world will switch, but until then I feel somewhat chained to Windows if I want to enjoy my hobby.
It honestly feels hostile
Very well put. I have the same feeling and it gets worse with every iteration.
Man, the disclaimer at the bottom that Business Insider is partnered with OpenAI to allow them to train on their articles is really the cherry on top.
That's a shit circle. I figured most of their articles were already written by LLMs.
It could be that microsoft was just the bootloader to closedAI
Copilot is going to want 50 gigs on YOUR computer's hard drive to store snapshots. MS also wants you to buy dedicated AI hardware to run a few of their apps. They're going to steal your computer's storage and processing resources to create a worldwide AI and surveillance network.
No thanks. I finally switched to Linux. Microsoft can become Skynet without my help.
Isn't that a good thing? The best job in the gold rush was selling shovels. Nvidia is already doing that, so I guess the second best thing is providing lodging, which is what Microsoft is doing.
They own like half the company, so wouldn’t OpenAI’s success be their success?
It's the "all your eggs in one basket" problem.
Boeing turned to shit after acquiring another company (not sure of the name), and it changed the culture and leadership
I think you mean McDonnell Douglas, it's what happens when companies fire all the engineers in charge and replace them with beancounters.
Boeing turned to shit because successive executive teams looted the company.
I am not following how bombardier acquisition plays into this
It was McDonnell and John Oliver had a whole episode about it
It was McDonall Douglas, and post merger the MD executives largely took over the company. I don’t see Satya giving up the helm to Altman any time soon.
Paywall
Some Microsoft insiders worry the company's AI strategy has become too focused on its partnership with OpenAI.
A few even grumble that the software giant has turned into a glorified IT department for the hot startup. These comments were part of a recent exclusive story from Business Insider in which Microsoft insiders shared candid views on the company's AI future and its new Copilot tools.
The group at the center of this is Microsoft's AI Platform team, run by Eric Boyd. This sits within Scott Guthrie's Cloud + AI organization.
Insiders say Microsoft is focused less on the internal services that previously made up Azure AI Services and more on the Azure OpenAI service.
One former executive who left as a result of the changes said products like Azure Cognitive Search, Azure AI Bot Service, and Kinect DK are practically gone. Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said these services exist in some form but either aren't part of the Azure AI org, have been renamed, or have been bundled with other products.
"The former Azure AI is basically just tech support for OpenAI," a former Microsoft executive said. "Eric Boyd is effectively maintaining the OpenAI service. It's less of an innovation engine
Windows Recall did it for me. I switched to Pop!_OS Linux and have been pretty content so far.
I cant stand microsoft I have to use windows at work and it drives me nuts.
Hey now! They're also the world's foremost bloatware packager. No one will ever take that away from them.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
