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.
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.
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.
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
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
Ok so there are 3 microsoft products called copilot now. Surely this won’t confuse anyone
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.
It’s been named “Microsoft Office” since 1990. Way to piss 35 years of brand recognition up a wall.
How drunk are these guys?
I would bet an absurd amount of money that Marketing people consulted Copilot.
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.
My LibreOffice is still called LibreOffice.
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.
Thank you, I’m saving this
No problem lol
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 if 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.
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.
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.
Damn, guess Libre Office is the only office app now
lol OnlyOffice is also an office app, so LibreOffice is not the only office.
And better for most things IMO
So, what’s onlyoffice and why should I switch from libreoffice?
If you think LibreOffice is good, then you don’t need to switch. If you have problems with the lack of familiarity of MS Office, then you might wanna check it. Though Collabora recently made a better replica UI, which is technically LibreOffice in a suit.
Personally, I’m happy with libreoffice and just don’t know about onlyoffice. I’m mostly asking for the benefit of others who might read this thread, but if onlyoffice is good then I might check it out anyway.
A factor for me is that it doesn’t feel like a Java app carrying around 30 years of baggage with it.
But there’s other things too
This feels like it’ll go the HBO Max, wait Max, no HBO Max, dibocal route
There was also HBO Now and HBO Go, so there’s even more runway for Microsoft to spend years floundering on their naming before they catch up.
It will be probably just Netflix now, since they bought it.
sigh NetMax? /s
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.
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Preview of tickets incoming in the next days:
“Do I have Copilot included?” “Is it the same as Copilot in Word?” “Do I need an extra license?” “Where is the Office app?” “Can you install Microsoft Office for me?”
Ironically a lot of those questions will probably be asked to Copilot itself first and hilarity will inevitably ensue.
It’s probably after that that the tickets will rain down en masse and they deserve nothing less :D
Nah, those users never opened co-pilot before. They have the two applications they use day to day and any deviation triggers a ticket
If Microsoft can help it Copilot is integrated absolutely everywhere by the time they’re done fucking up their own OS.
No need to open anything.
