Vissoh jeez i wonder what could possibly have led to this
kaoudisthe math works out here to ms losing 9.5% of its userbase year over year for the last 3 years running.
400 million users out of 1.4 billion is 28.5%
so in 3 years, ms has lost nearly ONE THIRD of its userbase.
stuff that in your kernel and crowdstrike it.
Posting Forever 🇵🇸@Viss That's such a steep drop that it feels hard to believe
@Vermintang thats probably why they elected to phrase it the way they did
CodingPanic@Viss that’s a huge drop… where are these users going? Apple? Linux? Somewhere else?
Joel Michael@codingpanic @Viss Android and/or iOS
@jpm @codingpanic according to the article, people are bailing out to a bunch of places. it suggests 'just mobile in general', and also not being forced to cope with shitty ms file formats, people can just go wherever they want. google docs, libreoffice, whatevs. its all interoperable now.
microsofts 'big deal' was office and they tried to lock down the file formats way back when so only ms shit could read/write ms formats.
well thats changed now.
ms is taking their ball and going home
CyberFrog@Viss this makes their aggressive push into "open source" software and their massive self-centered attempts at guiding and funding the linux foundation even more concerning
when push comes to shove I'm certain MS will revert to EEE on this matter, and the groundwork is already in place to claw back people by forcing them to use microsoft systems without a choice in the future tbh
when push comes to shove I'm certain MS will revert to EEE on this matter, and the groundwork is already in place to claw back people by forcing them to use microsoft systems without a choice in the future tbh
@froge the more people fall off ms platforms, the more others will see them and follow suit
nobody *HAS* to use ms stuff today, unless they are expressly developing for that os or somesuch. if all you need is comms and collaboration suites, there are a bunch of other options.
shit even canva is getting into the collab game
@Viss that's very true, I'm just expecting microsoft to helpfully "extend" those systems with new features for free, only to later lock them back into their own platforms, and force users back to windows unless they sacrifice all the fancy new features that they got used to enjoying
that's their classic playbook when others are doing better in the open market tbh
that's their classic playbook when others are doing better in the open market tbh
@froge see if ai werent a thing i'd agree with you there - thats how they've operated in the past. but now that they're all-in on ai, i expect they'll keep pushing that angle in the blind hope it'll somehow attract all these people that its actually pushing away
then after some lag, the stock will tank like 20% when the money people cant keep the ruse up any longer, and it may result in a change of leadership
Adam Shostack 
@Viss When I was there, getting a good estimate of the number of users was hard.
@adamshostack im just taking the article at its face value and assuming they have some intel thats either slightly nonpublic or intentionally veiled so its not trivial to get. its entirely plausible these figures are ballpark or something, but given ms' recent ... issues?
i wouldnt be surprised at all to learn people are bailing. we've had more than one customer ask us to help migrate off azure in the last 2 years
@Viss I only saw a screenshot, and not seeing source. Do you have a link handy?
RealGene ☣️@adamshostack @Viss
I would assume that all the built-in telemetry gives them pretty solid numbers.
Their time server alone would give a good estimate.
@adamshostack @Viss
MS knows exactly how many licenses they sell to gov and enterprise, so that's moot.
Telemetry from home users is wide open except for a tiny segment of geeks who try to disable it.
MS knows exactly how many licenses they sell to gov and enterprise, so that's moot.
Telemetry from home users is wide open except for a tiny segment of geeks who try to disable it.
Toby@Viss To be fair, the statements were about devices, not users, so there's a coefficient here for people owning fewer Windows devices. If I have a Windows machine and a Windows laptop, I'm not two users, and if I switch one of those for Mac or Linux/BSD, I'm not zero users, but I've still cut my device count in half.