Oh no. Anyway...
Make Windows 7 again (or just use Linux), ditch AI, value your users. Sack the CEO. Pretty simple.
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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This would be great, but unfortunately would not make number go up. That is all they care about now.
I dunno. Windows 11 sales have been crap. People aren't buying new machines due to it. Relaunch 12 as privacy focussed, AI enabled (but optional), and they could see a bounce. Double down on Office, keep a steady improvement on Azure, and see Xbox as a growth opportunity. Microsoft could avoid the AI slump
Notice how Apple have not jumped all in. They are anticipating the storm and are well prepared to weather it out
Apple did jump in but then backed out once it was clear their offering wasn't even close to the competition. Remember their big push on Apple Intelligence and how most of the features they promised never materialised?
While the back-peddalling was embarrassing at the time, I agree that their cautious approach since will probably work out better than Microsoft going forward.
If I had to guess, at least in the past, Apple has typically listened to its engineers. Maybe not as well as like Valve.
If I had to guess, at least in the past, Apple has typically listened to its engineers.
Fair.
Windows & Xbox are like 16% of M$'s revenue, they're not that important to the company.
Exactly, both are under performing. New CEO should be fixing that
But they don't give a shit about them, they cater to companies first and foremost.
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Windows 11 sales have been crap. People aren't buying new machines due to it.
Wait until new computers quadruple in price because of data center demands, driven by idiotic AI initiatives nobody wants, and nobody buys new computers.
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Sorry you're right, number MUST GO UP /s.
sigh.
Or double down on AI. Then double down even harder.
- Make the use of Copilot mandatory; simultaneously heavily monetize it to instantly turn the AI division into a profit center.
- To that end release the successor to Windows 11, a cloud-only offering that replaces the taskbar with a Copilot instance which launches programs for the user. Downplay any accusations that the new Windows Live 365 With Copilot is just a rental Windows 11 with the taskbar hastily hacked out.
- Don't forget that Windows Live 365 With Copilot does not include a subscription for Copilot, which must be booked separately.
- Get all of your customers to switch by immediately dropping support for all previous Windows versions, "migrating" their support windows over to Windows Live 365 With Copilot. Corporate customers, which have gone all-in on Azure, will need years to migrate off the Windows ecosystem, which means excellent short-term revenue.
- Make sure that Windows Live 365 With Copilot can only save to OneDrive to make it maximally hard for those customers to get their data out.
- Hope that the current world order disintegrates before the massive exodus of customers ruins the company.
- Whether or not it does, turn off your business phone and spend the next five years doing massive amounts of cocaine on a private island in the South Pacific.
A business plan to rally the crowds behind 💸
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“If I had taken the GPUs that just came online in Q1 and Q2 in terms of GPUs and allocated them all to Azure, the KPI would have been over 40,” she said.
"If I had bet on black instead of red I would have won"
I think she's saying she could have allocated the GPUs to Azure to game the metrics, but Microsoft chose to allocate them to internal projects, which is a form of self-investment. She's not saying they made the wrong decision, she's saying their decision in this longer-term investment makes the short-term metrics worse.
If ifs and butts were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry Christmas.
Is that the bubble beginning to pop?
Naw, the valuation is still $3.22 trillion. The bigger tell will be the AI only companies start feeling the squeeze.
I dunno, the bit about dedicating more data center capacity to customers rather than in-house use seems to suggest that Microsoft are acknowledging that AI is a bubble that doesn't provide any real value but they think the bubble still has some life left yet and they can make a buck selling compute to other ~~suckers~~ visionary investors.
Seems like it's down because investors think they didn't spend enough on AI.
Writing this from Linux which I installed last fall in lieu of the Windows 11 update.
I'm still using both OS via dual boot, and I still have some unresolved issues on Linux, but I will fully transition during the course of this year.
One thing that is really mind-blowing is the difference in performance on my ~7 y/o laptop. My Linux Mint is just lightning fast compared to Windows 10. You can quite literally feel how Windows runs a thousand random things in the background (most of which I never asked for) whereas Linux feels very clean and... empty, but in a good way.
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The same Melius Finance that gave Tesla stock its highest rating of "must own" due to Elon lying again that Full Self Drive is being deployed imminently to Teslas via their in-house "AI chips" eta Dec 2025?
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/tesla-stock-must-own-melius-220721932.html
Tesla stock is currently at $416 after a high of $474 in November, around when this call was made.
<investors_fell_for_it_again_award.webp>
$357 billion is between the total GDPs of Finland and Sri Lanka
It's actually insane how much money these companies have.
Ehhh...that's their market capitalization, not their cash on hand.
The market capitalization is just what the company is worth, based on what investors are currently willing to pay for ownership of shares in the company.
EDIT: Here's Microsoft's cash on hand:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/cash-on-hand
Looks like about $100 billion.
They can turn their market cap into liquid cash by borrowing against it. They can also pay directly in stock. E.g. how some pay their employees with more stock than salary. They can use their stock to buy other firms. The stock price and therefore market cap is not just an abstract number.
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I would desperately love for companies to lose big on LLMs. The vast majority of users just don't seem worth the huge energy costs. I do think there are a number of worthwhile ML applications that could make the world better, but I have little faith that they'll be allowed to unless they generate big profits.
Someone needs to engineer a virus that removes whatever defect humans have in their DNA that causes civilization-imperiling greed.
The problem is only a few humans with OCD that manifests as financial hoarding. They have more money than they or their descendants could ever spend, and yet they are driven to accumulate more, despite the obvious deleterious effects on society and the world.
If they were hoarding cats, or old newspapers, or rusty cars, etc., we'd step in, get them mental health help, and clean up the mess.
But since it's money, we praise them for their success, and make it easier for them to indulge their mental illness even more. Sometimes we even GIVE them more money for free, just because it makes them so happy.
It's time to stop indulging these lunatics. Take their businesses and fortunes away, we paid for most of it anyway, and put these maniacs in mental health facilities where they belong, at least until they have internalized a healthier attitude toward wealth, and their fellow citizens, and want to use their gifts to improve America, and not exploit it.
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I'm still on the fence as to whether their current CEO is just a complete business illiterate, or some kind of corporate Manchurian candidate... It's sure LOOKS like malicious mismanagement to me, a nobody pleb.
I initially thought he was great. Their cloud business was booming, it looked like they were converging their tools, windows 10 had its flaws but was pretty good. But now the tools are an enormous mess because they have changed their minds 5 times over, Windows 11 is complete dogshit and all the tools that are actually handy are paywalled behind expensive licences. Copilot is being forcefed to unwilling users and every single one of their tools is becoming worse.
So yea, I think he's a business illiterate because there is no strategy behind this mess.
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Do you mean that Windows Copilot AI Extra Spyware Edition wasn't a smashing success, despite literally everyone who isn't a buzzword-spouting CEO telling them this would happen for like a fucking year?
rather than prioritizing its in-house needs.
I can't help reading this as "AI has cost us this shitload of money"
That's because it's MBA speech for "AI has cost us this shitload of money."
Please die
Microsoft has really messed up quite spectacularly. 5 years ago I would never have even considered switching to another OS (especially for a daily driver).
Yet here I am, using LINUX! My experience with Linux has gone from the perception of it as a scary figure, a ghost looming around me that I was trying to ignore. But now, I’m realizing that Linux is more like Casper. Linux is a friendly ghost. So while I still may not know how to totally deal with cohabitating with a ghost, at least it’s friendly, in theory.
But in less obtuse terms: my experience with Linux has definitely had it’s terminal moments and learning to de-Windowsify my tasking, but it’s come to the point where the cons of Windows make it a non-starter.
Maybe it’s not the year of the Linux desktop, but the years of the Linux desktop. Reaching a wider audience and finding a way to make choosing a distro is going to be a task.
I will say that while I’ve never bought one of their systems, System76 is a company I regularly check up on because I think it’s very cool that they’re PC building from the ground up with Linux (and their own Linux distro as well). It’s a trend in the right direction, at least.
Microsoft’s finance chief, Amy Hood, argued that the cloud result could have been higher if it had allocated more data center infrastructure to customers rather than prioritizing its in-house needs.
This is 98% chance a lie. Refusing azure clients wasn't happening. They are saying the dedicated GPUs to copilot 365/windows/bing, but they would just slow tokens/second delivery or raise prices if they were constrained. Open AI/copilot service is flattening out is the far more likely explanation, and China/Anthropic/Google gaining share is apparent with frontend and LLM innovation.
That said, windows 11 copilot is going at about 7tps on simple queries about its QOS, and slow service of paid models could impact azure. In Nov 25, they did drop big customer volume discounts. There were big price increases earlier in the year, so growth was in part pricing growth, and likely a drop in usage volume from previous quarter, or at least very stable. The AI frenzy, mostly openAI/msft/oracle/coreweave block of absurdly impossible capacity growth depends on keeping up with supposedly massive (token) demand growth. There are still a lot of free alternatives in the space, and app download figures usually accompany free promotional usage of latest breakthrough model (sora2 was free use on release. kilo code this week has free Kimi K2.5. Other coding tools have fully free or generous free tiers)
Overall, this, and highly promotional industry, means its very hard for datacenter/LLMs to meet the hype. Deepseek 4 is hyped as a big leap forward, to be released in a couple of weeks. Everything AI boom is likely a lie, and Nvidia bribing Trump to sell H200s to China, at 25% export tariff, is proof of incapacity or unwillingness of US industry to deploy them.
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Attending those meetings must be soul crushing. The entire point of the call is to take advantage of your customers more, get more money out of them, and get more wasteful data centers built.
WE DON'T WANT DATA CENTERS, WE HATE THEM.
I hope AI dies a fast and painful death and the PC world can get back to normal.
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Could go down a lot further, a lot quicker when OpenAI Enrons. The whole tech space is a house of cards. Better to get out early and lose a little than be caught late and lose a lot.
god this is the newest product name. You have Office365 and now AI357!
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Microsoft should double down on data center construction.
Yes, Microsoft should invest big in hardware!
"lost". Isn't it just virtual money from the values of the shares anyway (until they are realized by selling)?
Is the money in your pension "virtual money"?
Microsoft didn't lose 10%. Investment funds holding Microsoft lost 10%, and they invest other people's money.
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