Microsoft just renamed Office to Microsoft 365 Copilot on Windows for everyone

I remember the time when Microsoft was rebranding everything as “.NET”. Lasted for a couple of years and then they moved on to a different hype.

kalleboo · a year ago

As far as I can recall, this has been their branding strategy:

1996: Rename everything to "MSN" including a news TV channel

2000: Rename everything ".NET" even if it's not a programming language

2005: Rename everything that remotely touches the internet to "Live"

2013: Rename everything to "365"

2025: Rename everything to "Copilot" even things that are not just an LLM

Also sprinkle "Windows" liberally over everything in the late 90's-00's

Did I miss anything?

Edit: was reminded of this classic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

Too · a year ago

Skype and Lync, surface, windows subsystem for linux, AD to Entra, 10S, "whatever for enterprise", whatever for teams, one, one s, one x, windows phone, windows mobile, windows mobile 8, service pack became anniversary update became creators update. Let's not even get started on things like Visual C++ redistributable runtime framework package for desktop bridge (not making that up).

jsmith45 · a year ago

2013ish also had a "One" naming trend that was short lived: Xbox One SkyDrive->OneDrive

It didn't seem to spread much though...

indrora · a year ago

you frogot "Visual" in there.

At some point the FTC and DOJ really need to split up these huge companies to stop this bundling of separate products to block out any competition.

bdangubic · a year ago

easy solution - just don’t use windows

smt88 · a year ago

Hundreds of millions of people are required by their employer to use Windows

indrora · a year ago

I've come to appreciate two things in salty ass tech culture:

* Don't say "hello" alone in DMs * When you say "Just", whatever follows can be summarily replaced with "Go Fuck Yourself".

Summarized pretty well by [0], honestly.

[0]https://youtu.be/BOKpkWnrq4w?t=309 (timestamp important)

dialup_sounds · a year ago

All they did here was change the name.

evanjrowley · a year ago

So that the next generation will never know there was such a thing as a local-first office suite free from invasive AI.

yencabulator · a year ago

Also good to remember that Microsoft Copilot is not Github Copilot even if Microsoft now runs Github. And then there's apparently Microsoft Copilot in Azure, which is a devops tool. Clear as mud!

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

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

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/copilot

rendaw · a year ago

Oh wow, I wish they'd adopt that strategy to clarify the mess that is .net, .net framework, .net core, .net standard, and .net.

whobre · a year ago