Microsoft
Post #7196 · source on Telegram
Microsoft Office Brand Evolution From Iconic to AI-Bloated M365
Description
An expanding brain meme with four tiers showing Microsoft Office's brand devolution. Top: 'Having the largest and most recognizable brand in office software' with classic Microsoft Office logo. Second: 'Missing the boat on online collaboration, doing it worse than Google, and losing a generation of students to Chromebooks' with the modern Office logo. Third: 'Re-branding without changing anything just to confuse everyone' with the Microsoft 365 circular logo. Bottom: 'Rebranding again like a year later and overloading your software with AI features no one asked for that actively get in the way of what...' with the new colorful M365 logo. The 'Paste with Copilot (Ctrl)' tooltip is visible at the bottom, driving the point home
More like this
More like this in Microsoft →
Use J and K for navigation
Comments
43Comment deleted
Microsoft's strategy: if users can't find the feature they need in the new UI, just add an AI that also can't find it -- but with more confidence and a monthly subscription fee
Microsoft's product roadmap is just the expanding brain meme in real-time. We're currently in the final panel, where the AI assistant is so advanced it can predict you didn't want its help with 100% accuracy, yet offers it anyway
At this point the Office roadmap is just `git mv logo.png logo_v4.png && echo "add random Copilot pane" >> release_notes.md` - shipping infinite diffs, zero deltas
The real enterprise AI revolution isn't replacing developers - it's watching Microsoft rebrand Office more times than you've refactored that legacy monolith, while somehow making Clippy look like a well-designed feature in retrospect
Microsoft's rebranding strategy perfectly embodies the 'move fast and rebrand things' philosophy - because nothing says 'we understand user needs' quite like changing your product name twice in 18 months while force-feeding Copilot into every text box. At least when they lost the education market to Google Workspace, they had the foresight to rebrand their way out of... wait, that didn't work either. But hey, the expanding brain meme format is fitting: each decision requires increasingly galaxy-brain levels of rationalization to explain to your enterprise customers why their muscle memory is now deprecated
Enterprise architects' nightmare: Office's monolith gets yearly lipstick and Copilot hallucinations, but collab still needs a time machine to 2007
Microsoft renamed Office so many times our SSO policies need an alias of aliases; meanwhile Copilot hijacking Ctrl+V is the first time I’ve seen paste become an interrupt
Enterprise lesson: when collaboration architecture lags, just rebrand until telemetry moves, then ship an AI that intercepts Ctrl+V - the only strong consistency left is the quarterly KPI
I still use office 2013 or something Comment deleted
You mean 2003? Comment deleted
The one with ribbons, 2010? Comment deleted
Naaah the one with .doc and .xls proprietary bullshit Comment deleted
Always were and still are, if you want it! Comment deleted
well now it's docx and xlsx doc and xls are the old formats Comment deleted
I like to see Open/Libre office people cry😄😈 Comment deleted
sure pal in that case you can have my ods file Comment deleted
I'd reply "please send MS Office compatible format and you'll comply 🤪" Comment deleted
and in what world couldn't I just do the same Comment deleted
Idk. First world? 😁 Comment deleted
we must be living in different "first world"s then Comment deleted
Ok first of all I'm in EU and second - I was mostly trolling, sorry😁. It's getting boring. Comment deleted
ods is MS Office compatible Comment deleted
Most still won't accept it. Government file upload forms in my state for example only accept MS formats, and PDF Comment deleted
Rename .ods to .docx Watch their entire backend explode Comment deleted
Japan just recently abandoned floppies, get a break, people need time to start using new tech 😁 Comment deleted
they abandoned floppies because they couldn't fax them Comment deleted
saying that like Germany isn't still infested with fax machines Comment deleted
Meanwhile Japan... Comment deleted
which is Adobe's format, even though it has an ISO Comment deleted
i mean, they did write the book on computer-based printing Comment deleted
They wrote their format by utilizing their own language which was before the books. Comment deleted
It actually depends on the country. I was really shocked when I faced odt files shared to me by Lithuanian authorities to fill in. I had to install libre office BTW. (Even Libre screwed the tables inside but still better than ms word) Comment deleted
Should have used linux Comment deleted
It was a macbook and I haven't got a couple of free weeks to install arch, sorry 😔 Comment deleted
oh cool in that case I can tell ms addicts to stfu and just import my files now not that I couldn't also just send things as pdf or csv, but … Comment deleted
Me but anything that angers the FSF supporters Comment deleted
Office 2003 was the last "classic" version — not spoiled by the ribbon interface. But, to tell the true, Office 97 was the real "last classic version" — not bloated by questionable features still hardly in use in 2025; if only it supported Windows 7… Comment deleted
Yes i remember 97th. WordArt FTW Comment deleted
But not the first one with ribbons Comment deleted
incorrect usage of the meme template, but certainly still a good one. and very true Comment deleted
Well, at least Google did not have such strong desktop legacy, sure they managed to make Web much smoother Comment deleted
Jokes on you, Microsoft had great collaboration tools BUT THEY MADE IT EXCLUSIVE UWP and NOBODY used the UWP apps. Except companies that bought a Surface Hub that runs Teams OS or whatever, based on the CoreOS concept that powers the xbox, hololens, windows phone and partially desktop. Comment deleted
For those who remember the discussion about using laptops as phones - forget it, we gotta build a mini-itx phone with this thing soldered on top of the case now Comment deleted