"Microsoft 365 has more than 450 million paid commercial seats. After roughly two years on the market, Copilot has converted approximately 15 million of them into paying users. That's a 3.3% conversion rate, at $30 per user per month, generating roughly $5.4 billion in annual revenue. That's less than what Microsoft spent on infrastructure in a single quarter (3)."
None of the numbers make economic sense.
@tante and this is despite CoPilot infesting every MS Office product like a rash.
Maybe the business model will turn out to be that they'll force users to pay extra to get rid of CoPilot.
You joke (or maybe it wasn’t a joke), but we have to pay extra for less sugar and salt in our food and beverages all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
Actually, it does make sense.
Apple Computer, was losing money rapidly, but gave schools free or discounted Apple PCs for decades. People said that doing so made no financial scenes.
Today, all those kids are grown and use Apple devices at home.
(Honestly, I didn't see a PC in a school until I was in high school.)
Microsoft is going to shove Microsoft 365 onto users, including OneDrive. Your kids will see this. You'll use this because your work will require it, and your kids will see you use it whenever you bring work home. And just like Apple, they're already trying to give this to schools too.
The same way Google saved Chromebooks during the pandemic, giving free and discounted Chromebooks to schools, and now a whole generation wants to use Chromebooks.
indeed.
get a whole generation hooked on using chatgpt/copilot to find or check facts ...
... and you control the public discourse and manufacture consent like nothing before
which is why some suspect the US gov is very happy for google/microsoft/meta to act like surveillance agencies ... because they do it on their behalf
Koch Network has a long history of keeping money-losing businesses afloat to achieve other goals.
They kept Uber & Lyfft out of bankruptcy, to thwart public transportation projects.
When Koch Network orders up a fossil fuel-guzzling waste, with a side of state surveillance, they get what they want. Or they think they will.
These billionaires don't give two hoots about "economic mobility", except their own.
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/
https://jacobin.com/2019/08/uber-koch-brothers-david-charles-rideshare-public-transit
The Americans want your data. That's why the price is irrelevant
Can't believe when I found out about MS (microsoft) beginning its monthly extortion ring for a product that isn't any better before extortion years.
Why use this product or any like it, the old ones work just fine for its original purpose.
Not supported propaganda you ask? I'm still using 8.1 and have a xp backup, lol. They lose you if they don't support the new tech extortion.
Entire system sucks when geared towards billionaire twerps.
@tante It's even worse:
Independent research tells a worse story. A Recon Analytics survey of more than 150,000 U.S. paid AI subscribers found that Copilot's market share fell from 18.8% in July 2025 to 11.5% by January 2026 — a 39% contraction. The most damaging finding: when workers only have access to Copilot, adoption sits at 68%. Add ChatGPT as an option and Copilot drops to 18%. Add Gemini on top of that and just 8% choose Copilot. (4)
That drop — from 68% to 8% — gets to the core of why Nadella is taking direct control and shuffling the team. Microsoft can put Copilot in front of 450 million users, but 9 out of 10 of them choose competitors.
Imagine how bad you must suck if 92% of your users choose the competition.
All the kids wanted to the be first one to be besties with the new artificial superintelligences being made, but because consciousness is probably many orders of magnitude more complex than any materialists or technologists are willing to admit, all they got was a shitty chatbot with a sophisticated parser
Nadella is quietly writing down this 1000x Surface fiasco so when the economy nosedives, fiscal structures constrict, and all the free money evaporates, MSFT can limp into the future
@tante So Copilot made $5.4B and Microsoft gave Suleyman 12% of it? Seems like a smart business move.
Imagine making more money to fail at your job than the vast majority of people will ever see in their lives. I'm in the wrong damn business.
@tante lol, I couldn't help but feel very snarky:
Inspirational Poster of the Week: F A I L U R E No matter how much you may fail this week, remember, it's less of a failure than Copilot conversions have been at #Microslop. Take comfort in that fact, friends! 😃
The ai guys are all after superintelligence (AGI). The way they think that works is when a system reaches X level of complexity (enough datacenters) consciousness will spontaneously arise.
So they don't care abt the spend. And the consumer aspects are simply the interim rationale to continue building datacenters. They literally believe that the first company to achieve superintelligence will rule the planet. Sound crazy? That's cause it is....
The “common sense” around artificial intelligence has become potent over the past two years, imbuing the technology with a sense of agency and momentum that make the current trajectory of AI appear inevitable, and certainly essential for economic prosperity and global dominance for the US. In this section, we break down the narratives propping up […]
6H057rUNN3r
tante
The Casual Critic
Captain Superlative
MostlyBlindGamer
kat
Netscape Navigator
Sneezy
Jhooper
Nicole Parsons
A Fine Day to build a fence 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🇺🇦🇵🇸
Scale Theory
unattributed 𓂃✍︎
Deven Phillips
lemgandi
Myphatself
John
ShadSterling
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
Jamie Gaskins
Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊)
grrl_aex
Alex Block 🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦
Brad Macpherson