[bustling-noose]

While the majority of revenue of Microsoft is not Windows anymore, I think Windows defines the brand much like how iPhone and Mac define Apple even though that might be part of the revenue not all of it.

What I am curious about is what happens when the original product that makes the company popular starts to experience poor quality. Take Google for example, its search has been on a decline in the last decade or so and needless to say the company is experiencing problems as well in the last few years. While GCP and GSuite are significant, people have lost faith in Google which probably started with search.

Windows 11 and the iPhone seem to be heading towards same fate as Google search imo.

[art0rz]

The only people losing faith in Google (search) are power users such as us. Regular users haven't noticed the decline, and search may even have improved for them. We are not Google Search's target audience. We need to stop pretending all products are built for the power user niche.

[jajko]

My wife is an opposite of power user and she now uses mostly chatgpt for anything more complex. The ease with fluent sentence search compared to trying to fit those few right terms that google search would understand, not overdo it, avoid over-SEO-ed pages... google search has been gamed for so long it became victim of its own success. It just has momentum but thats waning.

Plus often first results are pure ads, fuck that and fuck them. Maybe LLMs will one be gamed similarly, then we move to something else but right now its night and day even for common folks. Who cares knows it.

Just recent case - we were looking for a robot vacuum cleaner. Spent an hour battling shitty seoed crap sites in google search like nytimes with their paid very selective biased reviews, went over quite a few reliable ones, user reviews etc and came to my wife with list of preference vs cost vs reliability vs other aspects. She puts a short sentence in chatgpt and its the same freakin' list, in 20s.

[alister]

> we were looking for a robot vacuum cleaner

For this kind of product search, may I suggest Consumer Reports. It's one of the very few sites I'd consider unbiased since they (a) do testing with actual technicians and extensive laboratories, (b) anonymously buy all the products they test and they don't take gifts or manufacturers' sponsorships, (c) don't take advertising. They are funded by subscriptions, donations, and grants, and have been in existence for 89 years.

Specifically for robot vacuums, I looked just now and Consumer Reports has reviewed 46 different models from 14 manufacturers. (I knew about Roomba but had no idea that robot vacuums had become such a big category.) I'm putting the robot vacuum link below to give an overview. It's worth subscribing to evaluate options for a big purchase.

https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/vacuum-cleaners/r...

[croissants]

+1 for Consumer Reports. They're not expensive either, something like $5 per month. If they keep you from buying a bad fridge, it pays for itself!

Their recentish coverage of lead in foods is a bit embarrassing though, since they used a California standard for dosage limits that even the EU would blush at.

[throwaway2037]

I love this response, and I agree 100% with your suggestion, but, isn't it obvious? They didn't want to pay for high quality information. Instead, they needed to wade through rubbish "unpaid"/"free" search results. Or in their own words: "Spent an hour battling shitty seoed crap sites in google search".

[TheOtherHobbes]

Regular users have absolutely noticed the decline. A number of people I know have mentioned it to me unprompted. None of them are power users or even particularly tech-oriented.

[surajrmal]

I'm a so called power user and don't really understand why everyone says it's worse. Google is better than ever. The problem I've seen is folks using older techniques for searching that don't really make sense anymore.

[ido]

What are the newer searching techniques that make more sense?

[owebmaster]

> I've seen is folks using older techniques for searching that don't really make sense anymore.

Like typing what you want to search in the search input and hit enter?

[tuyiown]

I don't see how exact search string can lose its sense. But it does yield "no results", more often than before even if the string has to be publicly available somewhere, in a source I could make sense of.

I can see how google can be seen as better in some ways, but brushing all case where it's worse as irrelevant looks like an easy shortcut to shut down complains without caring if they might be legit.

[kenjackson]

A lot of non-power users are complementing Google search with ChatGPT. The main reason is that it will give an answer to more specific questions. Like “what are some quotes famous athletes have said about Usain Bolt”.

[throwaway2037]

    > Like “what are some quotes famous athletes have said about Usain Bolt”.

What a strange counterexample. When I try exactly that search in Google, I get a nice list of quotes from "AI Overview" in the results.

[kenjackson]

I thought they were talking about the traditional blue links Google search results, not the AI returned results. Then sure -- ChatGPT, Gemini, etc... I put them all in the same bucket as complementary. Interestingtly though, I don't get the AI Overview on mobile, so there I'd have to explicitly go to an LLM focused interface.

[throwaway2037]

I just tried the same search from my mobile phone. I see the same AI generated response.

Real question: Do you think normies distinguish between traditional Google search results and AI Overview? To me, normies use Google to find an answer. They don't care too much where the answer comes from.

[kenjackson]

I get this message on mobile: “An AI Overview is not available for this search”. But it does work on desktop.

[nyarlathotep_]

Beyond that--most non-technical people associate "web search" or search engines with Google. There's nothing else to them, even those old enough to remember the 90s/2000s before dominance was established.

[Ylpertnodi]

Most people I know are now using deepseek. I don't even have to show them a filtered ad-free web, anymore (that most didn't even notice the lack of cruft).

[tiffanyh]

> While the majority of revenue of Microsoft is not Windows anymore

It’s hasn’t been for 25+ years (more than 50% of Microsoft existence).

  1998 Revenue Breakdown
  —————————————————————-
  $7.04B Productivity Apps
  $6.28B Windows
  $4.72B OEM
  $1.94B Consumer

https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar00/mdna.htm

[throwaway2037]

    > Productivity Apps

MS Office?

    > OEM

Combination of Windows and MS Office licenses purchased by OEMs?

    > Consumer

What is this? People who buy shink-wrapped software at retail stores?

[unregistereddev]

Productivity apps would be MS Office, yes, as well as separately-purchased licenses for Publisher (and I'm sure there were several other apps at the time). I do not know whether this category would include Visual C++ or Visual Basic licenses, but I suspect it did.

I think you are correct on the OEM vs Consumer split. Long-forgotten memory: For awhile people would resell OEM software licenses online. OEM software licenses could only be sold as a bundle with PC hardware. But that limitation did not specify /what/ PC hardware or that it had to be an entire working system. So resellers would collect outdated 1MB SIMM memory cards or other small, cheap, outdated components and package them with the CDROM.

[scarface_74]

Google’s product is ads and GCP is an insignificant player in the cloud space. When I was at AWS ProServe, we never took GCP as a serious competitor.

GSuite still hasn’t made any inroads into the enterprise of governments where the money is.

[umeshunni]

Google Cloud revenues were $48B in 2024 vs $109B for AWS. It's silly to call that insignificant.

[asteroidburger]

Doesn't that include Google Workspace though? Sure, a dollar is a dollar, but presumably a huge chunk of that money is Workspace, meaning it's not going towards raw compute.

[scarface_74]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_Platform

Google Cloud Platform is a part of Google Cloud, which includes the Google Cloud Platform public cloud infrastructure, as well as Google Workspace (G Suite), enterprise versions of Android and ChromeOS, and application programming interfaces (APIs) for machine learning and enterprise mapping services. Since at least 2022,[9] Google's official materials have stated that "Google Cloud" is the new name for "Google Cloud Platform," which may cause naming confusion.

(Yes it’s a Wikipedia link. But if you go to the article it includes citations)

Microsoft does not include Office sales with its Azure revenue.

[trentlott]

But if we represent it as a percentage we can pretend it's relatively not a big deal and minimize their stranglehold on society.

[scarface_74]

GCP has a stranglehold on society?

Everyone who uses Chrome on Windows, Macs, and iPhones makes a choice to use it. Everyone who uses Google makes a choice.

[pjmlp]

Still, from all computing platforms that I have used since my humble Timex 2068 in 1986, Windows is where I have most fun, despite all the ongoing issues.

[paxys]

> how iPhone and Mac define Apple even though that might be part of the revenue not all of it

iPhone defines Apple, and that is justified considering the single product makes up 55% of the company's revenue.

[RajT88]

When I first heard that, I thought it was an insane factoid.

But then I realized that slowly over time, iPhones grew to get into the price range of full-on computers. And also, even the cheaper iPhones add in up sales when you sell over a billion of them.

[mc3301]

How is iPhone headings towards a similar fate?

[MPSFounder]

The iphone has lacked innovation under Cook. Last 3 iterations (since 13) have been virtually identical. Also, the failure of Apple Intelligence (oversold promise) has seriously hurt the brand. I am an avid iphone user, and will likely continue to be for the next 3 years. But innovation is suffering. Anecdotally, the least talented ML engineers are currently at Apple (the best engineers I know in the field are at Google and OpenAI). I don't expect Apple to be innovating much in that regard, given a lack of talent (just look at Siri for instance).

[firefax]

>The iphone has lacked innovation under Cook. Last 3 iterations (since 13) have been virtually identical.

Why do things need "innovated" constantly? Why keep making the phone slimmer rather than replace the battery with something more efficient, maybe add back the headphone port?

The original iPhone was a great leap forward, UX wise, but much like with a pickup truck at a certain point you'd expect minor tweaks with the yearly models.

[MPSFounder]

I agree they don't need to (and I believe their software needs lots of work, so stagnant hardware while they work on software should be fine). But, lack of innovation drives consumer fatigue, which hurts the brand (other companies will innovate and eat your customers).

[firefax]

>lack of innovation drives consumer fatigue, which hurts the brand (other companies will innovate and eat your customers).

But is adding features no one wants that sometimes degrade the user experience "innovation"?

I agree if they don't think about what consumers want and make updates they could get overtaken, but I don't think anyone is gonna jump to Android because they can get a 2MM smaller chassis --- the opposite, they might want an "innovative" phone with a removable and swappable battery, multiple SIMs, FM tuner, and a few other features that aren't "shiny" but the iPhone lacks.

[mikepurvis]

I'm a mostly-satisfied iPhone 13 mini user, but I'm considering moving back to Android for my next device. No one reason is the deal-breaker, but it's just a pile-up of stuff:

- My main compute platforms are now Linux and Windows, but even when I had a MacBook, I didn't really benefit much from whatever integration there was between the two.

- I tried and did not like Apple Watch, and I'm upset at Apple's treatment of other wearable makers like Fitbit and now Pebble.

- I'm frustrated that my iPhone 13 is still not USB-C when basically everything else I carry around is.

- I don't like how the Epic/Apple case went, and I wish Apple had been made to allow competing stores on their devices (the EU got this one right).

- With Apple having discontinued the "mini" models, physical size is no longer a differentiator— the Galaxy series phones are basically indistinguishable from modern iPhone models.

[serial_dev]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

I am a former Android user, but the quality of apps on iOS is just so much better. The apps "just work", and the integration with Mac, iPad, and watch is just simply so far ahead of anything Android offered, even if people think there is no innovation. IMO, it's so much better and the whole mobile space is stagnating, I think they will be fine even if they add features 3 years later.

[no_wizard]

Apple has some serious talent working on this stuff but they aren’t willing to rip apart user privacy to do things quickly like other companies.

[rahkiin]

It does what I need it to do.

As opposed to Google Search which does what I need it to do (and could do before) less and less

[FirmwareBurner]

>It does what I need it to do.

The thing is, Apple of Steve Jobs was more than just a "does the job" kind of product company, which was IBM's and Microsoft's place. It was sort of magical and ahead of the curve on many innovative things that would revolutionize and set industry trends.

Now under Tim Cook it feels stale and boring, kind of like your grandads khaki pants, does the job but we've seen it already several times, give us something new and revolutionary not incremental upgrades to the same things from 10+ years ago.

Apple of today resembles more the Dell/Compaq of the early 2000s, focused on milking the user lock-in effects and optimizing the supply chain to increase margins except wrapped in flashy presentations, but just as soulless and dead inside as those.

[dontlaugh]

I’m just upset they don’t make small phones anymore, but I don’t think that’s relevant to their revenue.

[ska]

Didn’t they just release a small-ish one ?

[dontlaugh]

The 16e is still a lot bigger than the 13 Mini. Even the Mini series is much bigger than the 5 or 1st SE.

I have a bit of hope that if they ever make a foldable phone, it’ll be small when folded.

[throwaway2037]

    > the failure of Apple Intelligence (oversold promise) has seriously hurt the brand

If this is true, is the dominance of the iPhone faded in any of their primary markets? Also: If the brand was so damaged, what brands are people moving towards?

[FirmwareBurner]

> has seriously hurt the brand

You're forgetting the Apple Vision Pro flop.

[ErigmolCt]

The flagship product may no longer be the main revenue driver, but it still defines the brand in people's minds