> I cannot have a conversation about Copilot!

> If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about.

I think this is basically a rephrasing of the reason for the shared name. This appears to be an attempt at brand unification.

Microsoft wants user's experiences with their products to blend together into an undifferentiated (in more positive terms, "seamless") set of interactions. Not a set of discrete pieces of software, just interacting with Microsoft via Copilot to... ask it to do their work for them, mostly. This is the AI-native future they're building towards. You complain that users can't talk about what tool they're using. Microsoft doesn't want people knowing or caring what tool they're using. Just pay your subscription and have Copilot read and respond to your email for you.

The problem for Microsoft is that branding only works if it's built off a solid, widespread product with a good repuation. Github Copilot might be solid but it's a niche product that most people have never heard of. So people wind up associating the entire Copilot brand with the mediocre to bad Copilot experiences they are exposed to on a daily basis, such as the useless Copilot button on Copilot+ PC keyboards.

I'm sure it happened in a meeting where the word SYNERGY was said a lot but it clearly doesn't work and it's not the first time Microsoft makes this blunder everything was .net then everything was live then everything was xbox then everything was 365 now everything is copilot and if someone tell me they use copilot 365 I still have no idea if they use web apps or desktop apps or anything because they confuse a brand with an actual product.

This is insane.

Thanks for the whistle stop tour of Microsoft branding! I remember when Microsoft Passport was first rebranded to be a “.net Passport”! And all the later ones.

If Satya predicted someone would map their frustration with his company['s naming] out like this, is there anything he could have done to prevent the embarrassment?

I see how excited the executives would get about one single interface for computing all locked behind the subscription. The article makes Microsoft look stupid. It's tough to believe they're doing it the best way. Was this really a necessary intermediate step? And haven't they burned the brand a good bit…

And apparently when the writing was on the wall however many months ago after they had 20 or 30 different copilots, they believed the best decision to be doubling down.

Stupidity and avarice, despite being unsatisfying answers, are sometimes the correct ones.

This! The most cogent and concise explanation I've heard for something this!!

This comment brought me a bit of that satisfaction instead, thanks :)

Among many other issues, the experience doesn't come anywhere close to seamless, right? Because each of these things is distinct and can't interface with the others? They could have tried to build a unified assistant, but they prioritized the rush job instead.

It's a feature, not a bug. If nobody can pinpoint which instance is crashing, you can't confidently figure out if you need to cancel the $19/mo, the $30/mo, or the $39/mo SKU. Obfuscation as a service.

It's called Microsoft 365 Copilot now. Maybe that will help.

Surely easier to cancel the card, no?

What are being called GitHub Copilot Products seems to confuse products with licensing plan and features.

I always think of GitHub Copilot as the product.

I can purchase the Business or Enterprise plan.

That enables features like Reviews, Chat and so on.

IMO this chart (at least for GitHub Copilot) is confusing products, features and licensing.

That's not to say it isn't confusing understanding what features are available when you get a GitHub Copilot license, but calling them all Products feels wrong. I can't purchase GitHub Copilot Reviews separately as far as I'm aware.

They wouldnt intentionally prompt mangle the product for their default offering to have a bigger up sales path ?

I agree, this looks like ~4 products expanded for comedic purposes: GitHub, Windows, Office (M365) and Azure has a thing that can be used for many things.

It must be intentionally obtuse, nobody could ever confuse copilot for copilot

If people ever wonder how this happens... let me tell you this is the organic evolution for giant multinational corporations. You have thousands of teams doing some computer stuff. And never, ever will it happen that responsibilities and product design get clearly cut for the hot ai stuff. At least hundreds of teams will fight to own a part of this "copilot" thing which leads to over a hundred new products named copilot. It's not just Microsoft, every single one of the big boys does this. You can't escape it. You know why? Because they all know the alternatives are even worse.

at my workplace some of the devs are using github copilot (their own private account). Boss said that our company already has copilot and everyone can use it instead of private accounts.. it is enabled in our microsoft account. Of course, this is not what the devs need. Now I understand why this is so confusing, because there are many copilot products.

This.

Github CoPilot is decent but the rest of the copilot ecosystem is a hot mess. It’s not surprising MSFT is struggling to monetize AI.

It's similar to how difficult it was to search for .NET or C#

That almost seems like a deliberate strategy by some "genius" PM... a lot less bug reports for specific products with actionable items for their teams, in favor of more insufficient reports to blame the one creating the report instead.

Copilot is Microsoft Watson.

Clippy is finally getting his revenge