[disposablezero]

Ahh the Microsoft Bob failed experiment and comically-annoying Office Assistant "Clippy"... the good ol' days. IIRC you usually had to custom install Office without the Office Assistant, desktop Toolbar and remove some other optional component which always slowed down a computer to a crawl (the early multiuser text input IIRC on Windows NT/2k/95/98).

Interestingly, recently Apple and Google both missed out on acquiring Viv as Microsoft snapped them up... ostensibly, an assistant far more integrated into third-party services with better integration developer tools/support and smarter AI. Apple and Google gotta double down on either lifting up Siri/Google's equiv. to that playing field or acquire other talent/tech to keep up.

As an aside, Microsoft finally has Nadella at the helm, whom built Azure, whom seems a better/different engineer/businessman than perhaps even Gates (much needed after Balmer)... although you can't argue that Gates didn't break ground in lopsided EULA/SLSAs for extreme profiteering (which was "better" for stockholders but "worse" for users, probably unsustainably so).