[HN Gopher] How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?
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How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?
Author : gpi
Score : 275 points
Date : 2026-04-04 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (teybannerman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (teybannerman.com)
| Razengan wrote:
| It's MSN, Plus, Live, Surface, 365 all over again
| RGamma wrote:
| Fabric is the _one_ place for all your data!
| frankzander wrote:
| But beware if someone say to them Microslop ... they don't like
| it if someone other make up new names :-)
| zdragnar wrote:
| Is it unreasonable to not appreciate an insult?
| function_seven wrote:
| I'm waiting for .Net Copilot with integration to Passport.
| xfactorial wrote:
| Kid: you are playing with forces of nature you cannot
| comprehend :-)
|
| That being said: I would love someone from Marketing and
| Branding to explain me this "Copilot everywhere" because it
| is unintelligible (unless they want to dilute it through over
| exposure).
| darkwater wrote:
| I wonder if they have more or less the same marketing team over
| all these years or now it's just part of the mindset.
| stephenlf wrote:
| Microsoft yearns for the flight simulator.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Its annoying especially since Copilot exists in Visual Studio
| (Code too I believe) and its not exactly "the same" thing as far
| as I can tell. I really hate Microsoft's naming conventions. At
| least call that one Copilot for Devs or something more
| meaningful.
| ethmarks wrote:
| The Copilot in Visual Studio (Code) is not the same as
| Microsoft's Copilot. The former is GitHub's AI product and the
| latter is Microsoft's AI product. You can tell them apart
| because GitHub Copilot's icon is a helmet with goggles and
| Microsoft Copilot's icon is a colourful swirl thing.
|
| It's wildly confusing branding not only because they're
| identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs, but
| also because they're both ultimately owned by the same company.
|
| I can only assume that the conflicting naming convention was
| either due to sheer incompetence or because they decided that
| confusing users was advantageous to them.
| lou1306 wrote:
| > they're identically-named things that both repackage
| OpenAI's LLMs
|
| Haven't tried it yet but the GitHub Copilot extension for
| VSCode also seems to integrate Claude, Gemini and other non-
| OAI stuff
| chatmasta wrote:
| They do, and those models are served by Microsoft. You pay
| a premium per "request" (what that means is not fully clear
| to me) for certain models. If you use the native chat
| extension in VSCode for GitHub CoPilot, with Opus model
| selected, you are not paying Anthropic. This counts against
| your GitHub Copilot subscription.
|
| The Claude Code extension for VSCode from Anthropic will
| use your Claude subscription. But honestly it's not very
| good - I use it but only to "open in terminal" (this adds
| some small quality of life features like awareness it's in
| VSC so it opens files in the editor pane next to it).
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| The best non-Clude Code CLI integration by far has been
| Zed's and I prefer Zed over what VS Code has become.
| chatmasta wrote:
| And let's not forget that Visual Studio Code (the IDE) is not
| Visual Studio (the IDE).
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| This is my biggest frustration as a full time .NET
| developer. Its especially worse when you're searching for
| Visual Studio (IDE) specifics, and get results for VS Code.
| It bewilders me why a company that owns a search engine
| names their products so poorly.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Copilot for Visual Studio (IDE) has multiple models, not just
| OpenAI models, it also includes Claude. It is basically a
| competitor to JetBrains AI.
|
| The only good "AI" editor that supports Claude Code natively
| has so far been Zed. It's not PERFECT, but it has been the
| best experience short of just running Claude Code directly in
| the CLI.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| Isn't it just their AI llm thing?
| ezfe wrote:
| Copilot is a brand that refers to a variety of products
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I thought that was Cortana? Copilot is the new keyboard button,
| kinda like the Windows key
| sublinear wrote:
| > .. the name 'Copilot' now refers to at least 75 different
| things. Apps, features, platforms, a keyboard key, an entire
| category of laptops - and a tool for building more Copilots. All
| named 'Copilot'.
|
| Right, so then it's not a "product", or even a range of
| "products".
|
| It's a brand name and inherently pointless to map out. It doesn't
| even have to involve any "AI" to be given the branding. All that
| matters is it's a thing they have, new or old, that they'd like
| to push people towards.
| yunnpp wrote:
| Plot twist: he used Copilot to generate the figure.
| quag wrote:
| It reminds me of around 2002 when Microsoft named everything
| ".net".
| amanzi wrote:
| Yep, I remember downloading a beta version of what would be
| eventually released as Windows Server 2003. The beta version
| was called Windows .Net Server 2003.
| rdhatt wrote:
| I had some books that referred to it as .NET Server printed
| before the name change. In the long history of terrible
| Microsoft names, this was a rare case where they were able to
| right the ship.
| pcurve wrote:
| And "one" like most Fortune 500 companies.
| auselen wrote:
| one.copilot.net
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Soon: Copilot .NET .
| Pxtl wrote:
| Azure PowerCopilot Live .NET
| rowls66 wrote:
| Or when IBM renamed everything Websphere.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Or when IBM renamed everything Websphere.
|
| You mean "Web's fear"? ;-)
| bdcravens wrote:
| Then they did the same thing to a lesser degree with "360",
| including the Xbox.
| karlitooo wrote:
| Also 365 -_-
| debugnik wrote:
| Also Live. Windows Live [whatever], Xbox Live [whatever],
| Games for Windows - Live, Office Live.
| Findecanor wrote:
| "Microsoft Surface" ...
|
| If had first meant a _coffee table_ form factor PC with touch
| screen and special software, which was able to sense special
| objects placed on top of it. Then that was renamed to
| "PixelSense" [1] and "Surface" instead got put on a line of
| _touchscreen tablet_ form factor PCs launched together with
| Windows 8. OK, reusing a strong name for a product line
| expected to sell more, and which still fit the theme made
| sense.
|
| .. but then the brand was also put on laptops, convertibles,
| _desktop_ PC and an Android phone ... eh, OK, but at least
| those also had touch screens.
|
| ... but _then_ the brand was also put on generic peripherals:
| keyboard, mouse, headphones, earbuds, etc. which diluted the
| brand to mean practically nothing. For example, a search for
| "surface keyboard", could result in a "type cover" for some
| kind of tablet PC _or_ a keyboard intended for desktop
| computers.
|
| Microsoft later did the same with the "Microsoft Sculpt" brand.
| It was first a compact curved "sculpted" ergonomic keyboard
| with chiclet keys and an ergonomic mouse that were most often
| sold as a set. That got quite popular and so the brand achieved
| recognition. But later, Microsoft decided to reuse that brand
| for completely generic peripherals with no special ergonomic
| designs whatsoever.
|
| BTW. Not long after, Microsoft also released products with the
| similarly ungoogleable names "Microsoft Bluetooth Keyboard" and
| "Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PixelSense
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Which was arguably more problematic. Are you referring to a web
| address or a Microsoft product?
| layer8 wrote:
| More importantly, you couldn't usefully search for it with
| the search engines of the time.
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| For a moment it was called Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365.
| Naming things is hard.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > Naming things is hard
|
| ... for people really bad at it.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Reminds me of Microsoft OneCare which sounds like saying
| 'wanker' with a slight French accent
| lucb1e wrote:
| Claude sounds like bollocks in Dutch ('kloot')
|
| Pretty sure bollocks was the literal example I read on HN
| like 10 years ago of what your cool-sounding product name
| might mean in Spanish, but I can't remember if the moral of
| the story was to check every language or to just accept it
| because it'll happen anyway
|
| Anyway, the various tech podcasts caught on after a few
| episodes and seem to now pronounce it more foreignly, so it's
| now more like clod
| Joeri wrote:
| The name that still takes the cake is Github Advanced Security
| for Azure DevOps.
| gwf wrote:
| It's the new .NET in that it been so overused as to become almost
| meaningless.
| layer8 wrote:
| It means "the AI thing we bolted on here".
| ieie3366 wrote:
| Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have been the
| first mass market LLM product (2022-2023 code autocomplete) but
| they completely ensloppified it
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have
| been the first mass market LLM product_
|
| Cortana was a great brand. Clippy is still on the shelf.
| Copilot _could_ have been a deep brand if they pulled it from
| their flight simulators. Instead it rings hollow of any
| meaning.
| ValentineC wrote:
| We definitely could have stuck with Cortana for a consumer-
| facing personal assistant. The first few Halo games were
| great.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Right, they had Cortana right there for the built in windows
| function!
| yunnpp wrote:
| Slopya Nutella leaves no stone unslopped.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| I think it's fine. GitHub Copilot is popular as ever,
| especially in companies that have enterprise tier
| subscriptions. Plans for personal use pretty good too, pricing
| is competitive. The VS Code integration and agentic features
| aren't bad either.
|
| Developer tools live in their own space. And I assume most devs
| don't really care that "Copilot" started to show up everywhere,
| especially in MS365 products. At least I don't. Conversely, do
| non-technical people care where the term comes from, and now
| means "LLM integration" in a bunch of MS products?
|
| I think it's better that Google going through Bard, Gemini,
| IDX, Firebase Studio, Antigravity, ...
| lateforwork wrote:
| Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI. How many products have
| Copilot? Just about all of them.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _Copilot is just Microsoft 's term for AI._
|
| This comment really helps me put things in perspective.
|
| I'm guess now that it's Microsoft's way of naming their LLM-
| powered products/features, the same way "Azure" is basically
| their codename for "cloud".
| Pxtl wrote:
| Except they named their local hosted version of TFS/VSTS
| Azure DevOps Server (where the cloud version is Azure DevOps
| Services).
|
| They just like branding their dev tools for whatever they're
| pushing at the time. In 2002 they named Visual Studio "Visual
| Studio .NET".
| hamasho wrote:
| It makes sense. And Google is its own way to name all AI
| products "Gemini".
| yreg wrote:
| Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10
| more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the
| product lines.
| chatmasta wrote:
| They've improved it since the initial launch when the
| service, model names and plan names all sounded similar and
| contradictory.
| jayknight wrote:
| Next year they will introduce "hAIngouts" as an AI chat
| bot.
| layer8 wrote:
| Ouch. Maybe "Google wAIve" for collaborative chats.
| ayewo wrote:
| > Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use
| 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to
| the product lines.
|
| I think they were lucky this time that they landed a good
| name after only a few iterations that has since stuck.
|
| Anyone remember Google Bard or LaMDA?
| idontwantthis wrote:
| But they put Gemini in google docs, they didn't rename Docs
| to Gemini like Microsoft did.
| gedy wrote:
| I think they'll more likely launch competing AI projects like
| 'Aquarius' and 'Doh' or something
| Twirrim wrote:
| And IBM has "Watson"
| lschueller wrote:
| SAP sales reps used HANA for "cloud" in the beginning...
| Which was bs back then and is today. But while everybody
| wanted to be in the cloud, SAP sales was scared to not be
| with the cool kids, when they do not somehow add to the
| cloud talk
| tylerchilds wrote:
| And Silly has Silly!
| jtokoph wrote:
| Great point. We're about to get a wave of Apple Products with
| "Apple Intelligence" in a similar way.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah imagine if they had unique product names for "AI in
| OneDrive", "AI in SharePoint", "AI in Outlook"... That would be
| even more ridiculous.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Not if AI is ultimately a commodity, which it likely is. We
| don't want or need branded terms for other common features,
| like networking or files. In the early days of networking,
| before it was standard, there were attempts to brand things
| like NetBIOS with IPX and such. I don't want to repeat all of
| that every time some company wants to establish vendor lockin
| or branding.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Is it in solitaire or minesweeper?
| hebelehubele wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Microsoft should add a new game to Windows to accustom
| Windows users to Copilot.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| Just what we need...AI agents that will play our games for
| us!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related/same discussion:
|
| _What Is Copilot Exactly?_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231
| throwaway87543 wrote:
| Okay. But how many products have Gemini or Claude in the name?
| guidedlight wrote:
| Surprisingly, I immediately noticed that "Gaming Copilot" is
| missing (i.e. The version of Copilot that Microsoft shoehorned
| into the Xbox mobile app).
| mrandish wrote:
| > "Gaming Copilot" is missing
|
| It would be ironic if there was nothing called "CoPilot" for
| Microsoft Flight Simulator.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| The PM: "People love watching streamers play games, so people
| who play games must want to watch a game play itself!
| Introducing Xbox GamePass CoPilot with Microsoft Flight
| Simulator CoPilot+, all included with your GamePass Ultra
| subscription for $199.99 a month! Never play your games
| again!"
| mirekrusin wrote:
| They should have called it Micro.
| claaams wrote:
| No one can ruin microslops branding better than microslop.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Reminds me of the 2010s when IBM called everything Watson
| nlawalker wrote:
| I actually was just thinking about doing something very similar
| for this but for "agent," specifically in the Microsoft
| ecosystem. There are a zillion different proper nouns (products,
| services, frameworks, toolkits and tools, SDKs etc.) containing
| "agent" now, plus a bunch of other things that are now "agentic".
| smelendez wrote:
| A ton of companies use agent/agentic to mean AI that does
| something with external effects, as opposed to a chatbot. I'm
| not sure if it's overused per se or companies are just really
| pushing their AI features in general.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I don't use windows, so most of this doesn't affect me, but I do
| use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all,
| whether "GitHub Copilot" and "VSCode Copilot" (sic?) are the same
| product? The documentation isn't even clear, and it's important
| because it affects billing. How do these two products interact
| and where do they NOT overlap?
|
| This confusion even bleeds into other coding harnesses. I have no
| idea which GitHub MCP server I setup in Claude Code, but the
| domain has "githubcopilot" in it. Am I burning copilot tokens (or
| "requests" or whatever is their billing unit) when I use this
| from Claude?
| chokolad wrote:
| > I don't use windows, so most of this doesn't affect me, but I
| do use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all,
| whether "GitHub Copilot" and "VSCode Copilot" (sic?) are the
| same product? The documentation isn't even clear, and it's
| important because it affects billing. How do these two products
| interact and where do they NOT overlap?
|
| There is no VSCode Copilot. There is Github Copilot integration
| inside VS Code.
| robocat wrote:
| Niece comment tries to explain a little:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47643220
| shireboy wrote:
| Git is a distributed source control system. It's open source
| and you can use it to version source code on your drive and/or
| a remote git repository.
|
| Github is one of the most popular git repository hosts. In
| addition to source repositories, it has other services like
| issue tracking and wikis.
|
| A while back, Microsoft bought Github.
|
| "Github Copilot" is a service you can buy (with limited free
| sku) from Github that adds AI capabilities to your Github
| subscription.
|
| One of the ways you can use Github Copilot is by using the
| GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode. This extension lets you
| use chat inside VSCode in such a way that it can read and write
| code. It lets you pick which LLM model you want to use: Claude
| Sonnet, Opus, OpenAI GPT, etc., from the ones they support.
|
| Note you don't need another subscription if you only use Github
| Copilot. They pay Anthropic, you pay Github. You _might_ want
| another subscription directly with Anthropic if, say, you want
| to use Claude Code instead.
|
| "VSCode Copilot" isn't a thing. Some people might call Github
| Copilot extension for VSCode "VSCode Copilot".
|
| Github MCP server lets AI tools like GitHub Copilot extension
| for VSCode, Claude Code, or any tool that supports MCP use your
| Github account to do things like pull requests, read issues,
| etc. Just using it from Claude Code would not use Github
| Copilot tokens, UNLESS you used it to work against your Github
| Copilot service. You would not need a Github Copilot
| subscription to use it for example to create a pull request or
| read an issue. But it would use your Github Copilot tokens if,
| say, you used the MCP from Claude Code to assign a task to
| Github Copilot. It uses githubcopilot domain because they built
| it mostly for Github Copilot to use, though MCP is an open
| standard so it can be used from any MCP-supporting AI tool.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Sidenote but I don't get why you would want to pay github to
| run Claude on your code.
|
| Yeah github pays Claude but what's the point ?
| ponkpanda wrote:
| Tighter (read better) integration with VSCode and Github
| than what you could get running claude code on the side.
|
| Your question does raise a valid point - Github Copilot's
| value proposition is fairly limited in my opinion. Not to
| say worthless but limited and clearly varies depending on
| how Githubbey your dev workflows are.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| The workflow that GitHub has for prompting agent inside the
| ide itself is by far and away the nicest and most intuitive
| I've used.
|
| Claude's integration looked like trash in comparison.
|
| Why would I lock myself into a single vendor when I can
| have access to all models.
|
| Also the GitHub subscription is a very good price.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yeah, the workflow is superb. That's what I miss most
| using Claude in a terminal inside VSCode. It doesn't
| integrate with VSCode native diff tools like the native
| VSCode (GitHub Copilot does. The Claude extension in non-
| terminal mode is crap.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| From a user point of view there's no real reason for it,
| from an admin point of view if your team is already using
| Github Enterprise then deploying it is basically hitting a
| toggle switch, and it has some more fine grained controls
| about what it can or can't do compared to Claude Code.
| yreg wrote:
| Most corporations have Microsoft already greenlisted as a
| vendor.
|
| Making it possible to buy something from Anthropic might
| require tedious paperwork for many of them.
| duzer65657 wrote:
| you can also get a service contract via MS quite
| easily/cheaply, which mightnot help you with hard
| problems but does solve the easy ones. example: in
| earlydays we bought OpenAI API directly and via Azure;
| when we needed account service we got it immediately from
| MS instead of waitlists from OpenAI.
| mschulkind wrote:
| I use it because they offer absurdly cheap prices that
| they're clearly losing money on. I can get $1000 at API
| prices of Opus 4.6, for in the range of $2 my cost through
| copilot.
| gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote:
| It's massively cheaper. Copilot charges per request, which
| with some clever prompting, can lead to huge amounts of
| work being done at fractions of the cost of Claude Code.
| Millions of tokens for mere pennies. MS must be taking a
| huge hit somewhere, because I'm probably getting 10-20x my
| value out of GH relative to CC.
|
| I am not locked in to Anthropic, either. I can easily
| switch between GPT and Gemini models based on how I think
| each would perform in various scenarios. That's a big win.
| I use a lot of design with Opus, implement with GPT 5.4.
|
| Also, Github Copilot CLI is pretty much at feature parity
| (for the stuff that matters) with Claude Code. Using both
| at work and home, I don't think there's much difference in
| features between the two. Maybe I'm not a super power user,
| and just a regular dumb user, but GH doesn't seem buggy and
| everything I think I'd want to do with CC I can do with GH.
| maille wrote:
| How can I learn that clever prompting?
| Handy-Man wrote:
| It's just one brand: Copilot
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It sucks they got rid of Cortana. The thought of being Master
| Chief with a Cortana of your own sounds badass.
| BirAdam wrote:
| The only Microsoft products I've actively heard people desire
| within the last 5 years are VSCode and Excel. Microsoft have so
| severely damaged their brand that they've finally shed the image
| of oddly gray Dell midtowers running XP on Pentium 4.
| bdangubic wrote:
| this is true only on HN. in reality, if you wanted a job where
| you did not use microsoft products you'd probably have to get a
| wrench and start doing plumbing work :)
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Nah, especially in technology it's very easy to avoid
| Microslop. I've done it successfully for many, many years.
| bdangubic wrote:
| possible, sure. easy, I would disagree. starting with
| government and any government contracting through most
| enterprises. startups etc perhaps but avoiding msft
| severely limits your options
| rr808 wrote:
| I work in big financials. Everything used to be built on Excel.
| A lot still is but Python/Jupyterhub or custom applications has
| taken over a lot of the complex stuff. Excel isn't really
| essential any more.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| While less necessary with AI, Excel is still the king of data
| entry and basic data manipulation (sorting, filtering,
| updating, etc.). I'd say that SQLite with a GUI for
| visualization is a far stronger competitor than Jupyter at
| those sorts of things. You can do that stuff in Jupyter, but
| it's easier in Excel.
|
| Jupyter also has a janky execution model. It doesn't track
| dependencies so you have to be very careful in how you
| separate cells from one another and just running the whole
| notebook every time seems kind of pointless vs just writing a
| pure Python script.
| tonypapousek wrote:
| Not sure they count as "products" in this context, but
| TypeScript and Playwright are still nice.
| r0m4n0 wrote:
| To be fair, Google does it too. I just had the product I work on
| renamed to Gemini Enterprise. Sure we use Gemini but it's
| confusing because it's not really an "enterprise" version of
| Gemini. It's just a way to name drop what it uses under the hood.
| This was our third rename in 4 years so probably will change
| again soon
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Microsoft is uniquely unable to name / brand anything sensibly:
|
| "Outlook" / "Outlook Web Access" / "Outlook Web App" /
| "Outlook.com" / "new Outlook for Windows" / "Outlook (classic)"
|
| .NET: .NET Framework. ASP.NET. .NET Core. Windows .NET Server.
| Ugh...)
|
| The love of the term "Explorer": "Internet Explorer" / "Windows
| Explorer" / "File Explorer" / "MSN Explorer"
|
| Similarly is the love of "Defender": "Windows Defender" /
| "Microsoft Defender" / "Windows Defender Antivirus" / "Windows
| Firewall" / "Windows Defender Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware"
| / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint
| Protection"
|
| "Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows
| Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the
| whole "Windows Live" series of products)
|
| Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that
| could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft
| Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server platform
| "Exchange"
|
| "Microsoft Teams" / "New Microsoft Teams" / "Microsoft Teams for
| Business"
|
| "Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site Server" / "Site Server Commerce
| Edition" / "Office Server" / "SharePoint Portal Server" /
| "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint
| Server" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint Server" /
| "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint
| Online" / "SharePoint Designer"
|
| "Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "Skype for Business" /
| "Skype" / "Skype for Business Online" / "Skype for Business for
| Microsoft 365"
|
| Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote
| Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows
| App".
|
| The old "System Management Server" became "System Center" and its
| family of products.
|
| There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too:
|
| "Great Plains" / "Dynamics GP" / "Navision" / "Dynamics NAV" /
| "Solomon" / "Dynamics SL" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" / "Dynamics
| 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" / "Dynamics 365
| Business Central"
|
| (For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era
| "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0])
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update...
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _" Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" /
| "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also
| evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products)_
|
| I thought this was the same app/protocol, only more
| enshittified as time went by.
| walrus01 wrote:
| May I propose the following for the AI/LLM in everything era?
|
| Microsoft is uniquely unable to name / brand anything sensibly:
|
| "outlook slop" / "outlook slop Web Access" / "outlook slop Web
| App" / "outlook slop.com" / "new outlook slop for Windows" /
| "outlook slop (classic)"
|
| slop: slop Framework. ASPslop. slop Core. Windows slop server
| slop. Ugh...)
|
| The love of the term "slop": "Internet slop" / "Windows slop" /
| "File slop" / "MSN slop"
|
| Similarly is the love of "slop": "Windows slop" / "Microsoft
| slop" / "Windows slop Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" /
| "Windows slop Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft
| Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection"
|
| "slop" was a term they loved: "MSN slop" / "Windows slop" /
| "Windows Live slop" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live"
| series of products)
|
| Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that
| could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft
| Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server slop
| platform "Exchange"
|
| "Microsoft teams slop" / "New Microsoft teams slop" /
| "Microsoft teams slop for Business"
|
| "Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site server slop" / "Site server slop
| Commerce Edition" / "Office server slop" / "SharePoint Portal
| server slop" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft
| Office SharePoint server slop" / "SharePoint Foundation" /
| "SharePoint server slop" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint
| Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer"
|
| "Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "slop for Business"
| / "slop" / "slop for Business Online" / "slop for Business for
| Microsoft 365"
|
| Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote
| Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows
| App".
|
| The old "System Management server slop" became "System Center"
| and its family of products.
|
| There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too:
|
| "Great Plains" / "Dynamics GP" / "Navision" / "Dynamics NAV" /
| "Solomon" / "Dynamics SL" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" /
| "Dynamics 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" /
| "Dynamics 365 Business Central"
|
| (For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era
| "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0])
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| My "callsign" at work for many, many years was a result of the
| entire C-suite hearing me laughing about Microsoft Critical
| Update Notification Tool and sending a manager down to figure
| what the hell was going on in the test lab.
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| Their Xbox consoles have also uniquely terrible naming:
|
| "Xbox" / "Xbox 360" / "Xbox One" / "Xbox One X" / "Xbox Series
| S" / "Xbox Series X"
| shireboy wrote:
| I get that it's annoying, but also don't know what else one would
| do? "FooPilot is our Office AI toolset, BarWonk is our code
| assist tool"? There are also a lot of Claudes and GPTs. Naming
| things is hard.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| The problem is not annoyance. The problem is confusion.
|
| One should aim for clarity.
|
| FooPilot, Barwonk, etc.. would actually be a vast improvement.
| Gigachad wrote:
| They could start by not renaming Microsoft Office and laptops
| as copilot.
| walrus01 wrote:
| This is what happens when you have some sort of top-down
| directive from the C-level people to put "AI" in everything, and
| dozens of department/project managers who all have their own
| fiefdoms
| thedelanyo wrote:
| Someone said - in Linux, everything is a file. In Microsoft,
| everything is a copilot. Lol.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Microsoft .NET Copilot
| gedy wrote:
| Microsoft Azure .NET Copilot 365
| gpi wrote:
| Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 355
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| I've been wondering lately if the next Xbox will have
| "copilot" in the name. With an easy to accidentally press
| dedicated button on the controller that interrupts the game
| you're playing to start an AI chat.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| A valid use case would be AI pretending to be the second
| player so that you can pretend you're having friends over
| while actually you're alone. Schizophrenia-as-a-Service.
| juliusceasar wrote:
| Haha, actually funny.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| They have that on windows game bar. Then you press the
| xbox button there's a copilot "for games" there
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Microsoft Azure .NET Copilot 365 Series X
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Microsoft .NET Copilot
|
| Not to be confused with "Microsoft Copilot .NET". :-)
| pluc wrote:
| or Microsoft Copilot for .NET Core
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| .NET Core does not exist anymore: it was renamed to .NET
| with .NET 5.0 (skipping version 4.0):
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=.NET&oldid=1
| 34276...
| jeffhwang wrote:
| Halo Cortana AI: Copilot for Combat 2026
| layer8 wrote:
| We are still missing "Windows Subsystem for Copilot".
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The real question is how many products could AWS call the same
| thing
|
| two extremes at play here. A single brand name masquarading as
| the same product, versus a hundred brand names that don't tell
| you a thing about what the product is
|
| Kind of why I'm fond of GCP now. Just name it what it is
| 1a527dd5 wrote:
| Ignoring the disaster that is their branding/naming.
|
| Copilot is _amazing_. Everyone is hyping about Claude, but I'm
| way more productive with the copilot cli. The copilot cloud agent
| is great, and copilot code review is great (we also tried the new
| very expensive claude code review - it was slow and expensive).
|
| Forget that it's Microsoft, forget that everything is Copilot and
| go and give it a shot.
| altern8 wrote:
| Nice try, Nadella!
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| How much is it?
| karlitooo wrote:
| maybe a different thing but trying to work with copilot as part
| of the microsoft apps (e.g. automation flows) feels like it has
| zero reasoning ability, just says the same thing over and over
| like a chatbot rather than LLM.
| quantummagic wrote:
| > Copilot is _amazing_.
|
| Do you mean Github Copilot? If not, which Copilot are you
| recommending? Can you give a link to where it can be purchased
| or trialed?
|
| I'm genuinely interested in trying out whatever you're
| recommending; but it highlights the problem, that I literally
| don't know what you're actually referencing.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I don't know if you're kidding, but I agree with you. I use the
| Copilot CLI in VS Code and Visual Studio and it works better
| than anything else. I do use Claude models with it....
| rdsubhas wrote:
| Blame brain dead product managers who merely want to hoist their
| poor quality yearly performance review slop on something existing
| that carries SEO/SEM value.
|
| Most of the time, these piggy backers only pull down the value of
| what they're riding on.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Related: a list of all Microsoft login portals (there are 609 of
| them).
|
| https://msportals.io/
| smallerize wrote:
| At least some of those were from acquisitions. All the Copilots
| are their own fault.
| fortran77 wrote:
| These drive my password manager nuts, especially when there are
| actually different logins for them. I just put a note in it
| saying exactly what service it's for.
| schappim wrote:
| Microsoft is not alone in this. Apple does the same thing!
|
| There is Siri on iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod,
| Apple TV, and CarPlay and are all different different incarnation
| of Siri (with different capabilities). Then there is everything
| else like the Siri Remote, Siri Suggestions (and all their types:
| Siri apps suggestions, Maps, keyboard, Share Sheet, etc), Siri
| Shortcuts, and Siri Knowledge (WolframAlpha + Wikipedia + other
| databases?).
|
| I'm sure 75% of these will be rebranded "Apple Intelligence" by
| the end of the year...
| flexagoon wrote:
| Idk, at least in Apple's case it all refers to a voice
| assistant and some of the features integrated with it.
|
| If they were like MS, they would add Siri into everything and
| then call it "Siri Cloud", "Siri Messages", etc (if they were
| even more like MS, iMessage would be "Siri 365 Communication
| Suite")
| schappim wrote:
| These are all non talky talky: Siri Suggestions, Siri
| Knowledge (Safari / Spotlight Intelligence), Siri Shortcuts
| (Automation, not voice), Siri Intelligence (On-device ML
| features), Siri Widget/Watch face... you get the idea. There
| was a time when "Siri" was the catch all for Smart/ML.
| layer8 wrote:
| It also refers to various "smart" suggestions that have
| nothing to do with the voice assistant:
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-siri-
| suggestions...
|
| Nowadays Apple would brand such features as "Apple
| Intelligence", but since they already existed long before,
| they are "Siri".
|
| Though I agree that it's not quite as badly ubiquitous as
| Copilot.
| Dwedit wrote:
| I have personally nullified one of those, namely the Copilot Key.
| It took a low level keyboard hook, and blocking a specific
| sequence of keys, then injecting the right ctrl key back.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| How many of those are used regularly by more than 0.1% users?
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