How Microsoft's AI Investment is Stabilizing Its Cloud Business (nytimes.com) 12
ZDNet reports an interesting static from Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella. "We have over 1 million paid Copilot users in more than 37,000 organizations that subscribe to Copilot for business, with significant traction outside the United States."
And Microsoft's quarterly results also "showed early signs that the company's investments in generative AI were beginning to bolster sales, most notably reversing what had been slowing growth of the company's important cloud computing product," reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) The company had $56.5 billion in sales in the three months that ended in September, up 13% from a year earlier. Profit hit $22.3 billion, up 27%. The results beat analyst expectations and Microsoft's own estimates.
Microsoft had told investors that A.I. wouldn't start producing meaningful results until after the start of 2024, when more products became widely available. The company and its competitors are racing to put generative A.I. into nearly every product they offer. Microsoft is seen by many companies as a leading A.I. provider, thanks to its partnership with — and $13 billion investment in — the start-up OpenAI, which introduced the chatbot ChatGPT almost a year ago. Microsoft's flagship cloud computing product, Azure, grew 29%, up from 26% in the previous quarter. About three percentage points of Azure's growth came from generative A.I. products, including the access Microsoft provides to OpenAI's GPT-4 language model, more than the company had told investors to expect.
More than 18,000 organizations are using Microsoft's Azure OpenAI services, Satya Nadella, the company's chief executive, said in a call with investors. He said that included customers who had not used Azure before. "Azure again took share as organizations took their workloads to our cloud," Mr. Nadella said... The company said that sales could increase as much as 8.7% in the current quarter, exceeding investor expectations, and that it was investing in building data centers to support the demand for A.I. and cloud computing...
Microsoft's personal computing business grew just 3%, to $13.7 billion, reflecting how consumer behaviors have shifted since the laptop-buying binges of the pandemic. The revenue of the Windows operating system installed on new computers was up 4%. Gaming provided a consumer bright spot, with Xbox content and services up 13%.
Next month Microsoft integrates its Copilot AI product into its Excel/Word/Teams "productivity suite" — but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 40% of Fortune 100 companies have already been testing the feature during its "limited preview", and "so far, so good."
Yet the article notes it isn't all good news for Microsoft. Investment bank UBS has told investors that while Microsoft integrated an AI-powered chatbot into its Bing search engine, there is "no evidence" that Bing has actually gained any search market share.
And Microsoft's quarterly results also "showed early signs that the company's investments in generative AI were beginning to bolster sales, most notably reversing what had been slowing growth of the company's important cloud computing product," reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) The company had $56.5 billion in sales in the three months that ended in September, up 13% from a year earlier. Profit hit $22.3 billion, up 27%. The results beat analyst expectations and Microsoft's own estimates.
Microsoft had told investors that A.I. wouldn't start producing meaningful results until after the start of 2024, when more products became widely available. The company and its competitors are racing to put generative A.I. into nearly every product they offer. Microsoft is seen by many companies as a leading A.I. provider, thanks to its partnership with — and $13 billion investment in — the start-up OpenAI, which introduced the chatbot ChatGPT almost a year ago. Microsoft's flagship cloud computing product, Azure, grew 29%, up from 26% in the previous quarter. About three percentage points of Azure's growth came from generative A.I. products, including the access Microsoft provides to OpenAI's GPT-4 language model, more than the company had told investors to expect.
More than 18,000 organizations are using Microsoft's Azure OpenAI services, Satya Nadella, the company's chief executive, said in a call with investors. He said that included customers who had not used Azure before. "Azure again took share as organizations took their workloads to our cloud," Mr. Nadella said... The company said that sales could increase as much as 8.7% in the current quarter, exceeding investor expectations, and that it was investing in building data centers to support the demand for A.I. and cloud computing...
Microsoft's personal computing business grew just 3%, to $13.7 billion, reflecting how consumer behaviors have shifted since the laptop-buying binges of the pandemic. The revenue of the Windows operating system installed on new computers was up 4%. Gaming provided a consumer bright spot, with Xbox content and services up 13%.
Next month Microsoft integrates its Copilot AI product into its Excel/Word/Teams "productivity suite" — but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 40% of Fortune 100 companies have already been testing the feature during its "limited preview", and "so far, so good."
Yet the article notes it isn't all good news for Microsoft. Investment bank UBS has told investors that while Microsoft integrated an AI-powered chatbot into its Bing search engine, there is "no evidence" that Bing has actually gained any search market share.
Bing? (Score:5, Insightful)
there is "no evidence" that Bing has actually gained any search market share
I don't think AI is going to help Bing - AFAICT people don't use it because its results aren't very good, and I don't see AI helping with that. As crappy as Google search has gotten, I still jump to it very frequently after failed searches on the Bing-powered DuckDuckGo.
What might help Bing gain market share is to take advantage of Google's utter suckiness by creating a better search engine that indexes the Web more completely, and favours relevant-to-the-user results instead of relevant-to-the-advertisers garbage.
Good lord, I find myself actually rooting for Microsoft, though I would be happy to watch them die. Google, how far thou hast fallen.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm trying to remember how many years it's been since I last used Google. It's at least five, possibly close to ten. My searches haven't been affected in the least by not using them.
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yeah i book mark slash dot too
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IMO I've found the AI is much better at searching for certain domains of things.
Basically, I still find Google consistently better than Bing for search, but when I can't find something immediately, Bing Chat often does. Usually when I'm trying to describe something I only half-remember, vs. something where I know precision search terms. Eg. the other day I was trying to remember a point and click adventure game that came out sometime in the last decade that starts with a context between elves or fairies (
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think a "gain in market share" would be the goal here for Bing Chat, but rather, a gain in AI market share. Bing's AI chat may trounce AI competitors, without really adding to Bing Search's market share. That would still be a success, IMO.
1 million users seems like a drop in the ocean. (Score:3)
"We have over 1 million paid Copilot users in more than 37,000 organizations that subscribe to Copilot for business, with significant traction outside the United States."
1 million users seems like a drop in the ocean to me for something the size of Microsoft. Businesses that might have no clues and are scared to be left behind. You should see all the "Get AI now or be left behind to die" mail form spam the websites I host get. Gladly enough, spam assassin blocks it from reaching anybody.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering that the only possible market for GitHub Copilot is comprised of software developers, a million seems like a lot bigger number. GitHub Copilot is strictly for programming help within popular IDEs, nothing else.