Ask Paul: January 17 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Welcome to the end of a needlessly contentious week. We have AI, we have misinformation, we have it all.

By the way, we're flying to Mexico tomorrow (Saturday) and plan to be there roughly three months, though we don't yet have a return date. I can't imagine we'll extend this one, though, as we have at least two major commitments in May. So we'll see what happens.

And before getting to this week's questions, I want to highlight that wrote a quick follow-up to my 2025 is the Year of Competing AI Business Models (Premium) editorial called, Well, That Was Quite the Week that may be worth reading. It's related to some of the questions this week, for sure.

On that note.
? YAOR (Yet another Office rebranding)?
digiguy asks:

Hi Paul, I read Windows Central top story Microsoft's dumbest rebrand in its near 50 year history just got even dumber and it really gives me Windows 8 vibes ... They are rebranding Office to Copilot and using the power of Office massive adoption to shove the Copilot brand and AI into everyone's throat, including businesses. I wonder if this will again backfire and impact Office use or even if Microsoft will have to go back like they did with Windows 10 after 8.

Three things.

First, I will not link to that nonsese.

Second, thanks for making me read this. ? I was studiously avoiding this post because the author has extreme views I routinely disagree with. Also, his focus, such as it is, is on gaming not Windows, Microsoft 365, or AI. So his opinions are no more informed than anyone else's. Reading this, maybe less so.

Third, that's not what's happening. No surprise there. See points one and two.

Microsoft is not rebranding Office to Copilot.

Microsoft is renaming the Microsoft 365 app to Microsoft 365 Copilot. It was previously called the Office app. But it was renamed when Microsoft sort-of rebranded Office to Microsoft 365. (The Office brand still exists and thanks to its commonality, it will likely never go away. Indeed, the app was previously labeled as "Microsoft 365 (Office).")

All Microsoft did was a rename an app. Cue the freak-out. And it's an app that I suspect most customers don't even notice, let alone use. The impetus behind this change is tied to the odd news we received in late 2024, when Microsoft informed its commercial Microsoft 365 customers of the coming changes. It really has to do with separating paid commercial AI access, which can use company data, from the consumer Copilot offering, which is world-facing. So it's about data governance or, more simply, data protection. Not so much about a brand.

I can't stand to see stupidity like this get any attention. It's a waste of our time and energy. It's not true. And it does not matter in the slightest.

Whatever happens, marketing decisions at Microsoft seem crazy, sounds as if Lenovo renamed their Thinkpad brand to some Lenovo Business or whatever... Pure suicide.

Dell: Hold my beer.

HP: Hold my beer...