This exactly. All the things they’ve bought they’ve slowly started pushing towards monetization, away from users.
Old Microsoft was specifically fighting Bill Gates’s personal crusade for IP law; now that his influence is diminishing, they’re seeing the dollar signs that are written all over the phrase “free code.”
They finally accepted that the real money is in being the world’s datacenter rather than trying to make the default operating system for every computer, especially when some crazy nerds will do that for free
I don’t buy the datacenter argument. The Azure is in the market minority, while Windows and Office are still their main cash cows, even in a slowly diminishing market. Seems like their current play is at some form of videogame dominance with ActiBliz purchase and whatever the deal they have with Ubisoft and others to host all their servers on Azure, but that’s a very dubious strategy given how gaming industry has been eating itself last decade. Honestly, they should’ve kept pushing the windows mobile instead.
So I’ve never looked up Microsoft’s financial reporting before but from what I can glean they report 3 business units with the following revenue for 2023:
Productivity and Business Processes 69 Billion
Intelligent Cloud 88 Billion
More Personal Computing 54 billion
It’s not very clear where the gaming and Windows business units fall in there nor how they compare to eachother, but what is clear is that Azure is absolutely killing it in revenue for Microsoft
Here’s a report of the current market breakdown. Azure is over 23% of the entire cloud market and gaining ground rapidly.
I’ve probably made some errors in this quick data grab, but it’s extremely clear that azure is a significant portion of Microsoft’s interests right now.
Huh, the more you know. I was under impression that google and amazon had much bigger market share and Microsoft was at 10% at best, but I never actually looked that up. Now looking at it, what you’ve said makes much more sense, thanks.
They stopped being dumb assholes with their war on open source and understood that they can make money with it, but they are still greedy assholes.
This exactly. All the things they’ve bought they’ve slowly started pushing towards monetization, away from users.
Old Microsoft was specifically fighting Bill Gates’s personal crusade for IP law; now that his influence is diminishing, they’re seeing the dollar signs that are written all over the phrase “free code.”
(“So I can just… take it? And… sell it?”)
They finally accepted that the real money is in being the world’s datacenter rather than trying to make the default operating system for every computer, especially when some crazy nerds will do that for free
I don’t buy the datacenter argument. The Azure is in the market minority, while Windows and Office are still their main cash cows, even in a slowly diminishing market. Seems like their current play is at some form of videogame dominance with ActiBliz purchase and whatever the deal they have with Ubisoft and others to host all their servers on Azure, but that’s a very dubious strategy given how gaming industry has been eating itself last decade. Honestly, they should’ve kept pushing the windows mobile instead.
So I’ve never looked up Microsoft’s financial reporting before but from what I can glean they report 3 business units with the following revenue for 2023:
It’s not very clear where the gaming and Windows business units fall in there nor how they compare to eachother, but what is clear is that Azure is absolutely killing it in revenue for Microsoft
Here’s a report of the current market breakdown. Azure is over 23% of the entire cloud market and gaining ground rapidly.
I’ve probably made some errors in this quick data grab, but it’s extremely clear that azure is a significant portion of Microsoft’s interests right now.
edit: formatting, embedded chart
Huh, the more you know. I was under impression that google and amazon had much bigger market share and Microsoft was at 10% at best, but I never actually looked that up. Now looking at it, what you’ve said makes much more sense, thanks.