Microsoft Office is a Dying Cash Cow and Now It's Just Dying/Starving
Microsoft has a "business model" problem. It no longer knows of any reliable way to milk 90% of more of the world's computer users for Windows and Office licences. There's competition and for many there are more options out there. Most people use Android and they don't need some bloated office suite because many processes involve Web forms, not sending around E-mails with Word attachments. Those Web forms do not need MSIE (hence, Windows) for ActiveX or an equivalent. Chrome usually does the 'job'* and it runs on all "major" platforms.
So what can Microsoft sell other than its own shares and promises of some "hey hi" (AI) "era"? What exactly? Nothing**.
Even IDG, a propaganda network funded by Microsoft, asks in a headline some rather curious questions.
It is "time for Scribus, Inkcape, LibreOffice's Draw, and Calligra's Karbon to join forces and market the heck out of each other," an associate said, linking to the above ("This Office app survived 35 years. Now Microsoft is killing it").
You know what it's an "era" of?
Free software. Let's make it happen. █
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* Sadly, a lot of "journalism" about "Linux" and even "Chrome" is fake. Here's a new example:
It's 100% LLM slop:
** There's a bunch of fake stories (marketing) such as this one ("Microsoft to invest billions in AI data centres in South Africa"). We saw some more in recent days. Some of them mention some made up (fictional) sum of money when it's clearly just "politics, with non-existent money," as an associate put it. They try to pretend Microsoft is some magical, regional job creator, whereas in reality Microsoft only lays off thousands per month so far this year.