Microsoft
includes Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Bing, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Access, Microsoft 365 and 3 more
33 statements across 22 episodes · 6 bullish · 10 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Oct 19, 2020 by Benedict Evans · said 571 times in 73 episodes since 2020 · across every show →
Mentions by year, the whole family
brought up most by Benedict Evans (529), Bernadette Kevins (29), Toni Cowan-Brown (13)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 73 mentions in 7 episodes 10 per episode
2025 35 mentions in 4 episodes 9 per episode
2024 57 mentions in 7 episodes 8 per episode
2023 90 mentions in 14 episodes 6 per episode
2022 141 mentions in 14 episodes 10 per episode
2021 84 mentions in 19 episodes 4 per episode
- 'Digital transformation' - beyond the silly slogan
- What we know about web 3 so far
- Metaverse - beyond the buzzword
- The Meta reality
- The history of doom-scrolling
- Paying attention to Apple again
- Who's in the office? Notes on a year of remote work.
- Apple's metronome
- 11 more episodes that year, every mention in 2021 →
2020 91 mentions in 8 episodes 11 per episode
Everything said about Microsoft, oldest first
Oct 19, 2020 neutral
Samsung and Microsoft release folding phones as public product experiments
“Whereas what you've also seen in the last few months is another wave of folding phones. Microsoft has this duo, which is two screens. Samsung has, and a couple of, and Motorola have been selling like 1500 dollar phones that fold in half, and the screen folds i…”
Nov 2, 2020 negative
Nov 2, 2020 negative
Evans: Microsoft's calls to regulate Google are self-serving
“One of them is of course that when Microsoft says that you should regulate Google, they're being tremendously self-serving. When Microsoft says, ah, regulation had a big effect on us and you should do it to Google now. You can't just take that at face value as…”
Nov 2, 2020 neutral
Evans: Tech monopolies fall when industry paradigm shifts bypass them
“Controlling Windows doesn't give them dominance of the tech industry, and so what happens is, like, and it's the analogy that I use here, you've built your castle, and it's absolutely impregnable, and sometimes people capture your castle like they Tunnel under…”
Nov 2, 2020 neutral
Evans: US antitrust punishes lawbreaking while Europe engineers market competition
“US regulation tends to proceed in criminal cases. They tend to look, they tend to say, did you break the Sherman Antitrust Act of 16, 21, or whenever the hell they passed it? And yes or no, and if yes, then we will do this thing. And 20 years ago, they tried t…”
Dec 7, 2020 negative
Dec 22, 2020 neutral
Paradigm Shifts Disrupt Incumbents by Doing Something Entirely Different
“Each of those generations tended to change what companies mattered. So IBM dominates mainframes, and in fact, at the time, people used to talk about IBM and the Seven Dwarfs, because there were seven much smaller companies, like kind of Honeywell and Control D…”
Feb 21, 2021 positive
Mar 7, 2021 neutral
Jun 14, 2021 neutral
Evans: Apple views user privacy violations as analogous to malware
“I think Apple sees privacy as sort of analogous to malware. It thinks that this is an architectural problem on the computer. It controls the computer. They make the operating system. It's their job to fix it in the same way that it was sort of Microsoft's job …”
Sep 28, 2021 neutral
Evans: a16z Never Passed on Deals Fearing Big Tech Competition
“When I worked at Andreessen Horowitz, we saw three or 4000 companies a year. You know, I don't think we ever said, you know, what if Google does this? Or, you know, you can't invest in that because Microsoft might do that or because Amazon might do that.”
Jul 25, 2022
Sep 19, 2022 positive
Dec 11, 2022 neutral
Dec 11, 2022 neutral
Dec 11, 2022 neutral
Dec 11, 2022 neutral
Evans: FTC Meta-Within case is very aggressive; Activision case is much less aggressive
“I think within is kind of a test case to try and push the you know, really kind of move the flag post, move the goal much further over. You know, it's a very aggressive case. I think the Activision case is actually much less aggressive.”
Dec 11, 2022 positive
Feb 12, 2023 positive
Mar 27, 2023 bearish
Mar 27, 2023
Evans: Incumbents treat AI as a feature, but disruption requires new products
“The incumbent's always trying to make the new thing a feature. And so that's very obviously what's happening with Microsoft and Google, including this in PowerPoint and office and of course in search and everything else. But what actually happens is, is then p…”
Jun 5, 2023 negative
Evans: HoloLens and Magic Leap demos misrepresented narrow field of view
“The big Bullshit thing that you get in these demos, particularly for AR, like that you got with particularly with HoloLens, but also to some extent with Magic Leap, is that they would show you somebody in a slightly three-dimensional world with stuff all aroun…”
Aug 17, 2023 neutral
Dec 17, 2023 bullish
Aug 19, 2024 negative
Aug 19, 2024 negative
Aug 19, 2024 negative
Nov 16, 2025 neutral
Evans: Big companies run 10 to 20 AI pilots without systemic clarity
“Every big company now has had, like, 10 AI presentations. They've had one from Microsoft and Google, they've had the one from their ad agency, they've had the one from Bain or BCG or McKinsey, they maybe had one from OpenAI, they've had stuff from Accenture, a…”
Nov 16, 2025 neutral
Evans: Big Tech funds AI capex out of cash flow, unlike OpenAI
“Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are funding it out of cash flow, Meta less so than the others, whereas OpenAI has to do these innovative funding structures because it has no cash flow, and Oracle is basically going to borrow a hundred percent of revenue to…”
Feb 23, 2026 neutral
Evans: Big Four tech capex will jump from $400B to $650B
“The big four companies, platform companies, spent four hundred billion dollars on capex last year. This year, they've said they'll spend 650, more or less. Microsoft hasn't been given full year guidance. But Meta and Google and Amazon have more or less doubled…”
Feb 28, 2026 bearish
Evans: OpenAI and Anthropic lack distribution and cannot out-innovate startup ecosystem
“You don't have the existing feature set that Google and Meta and Microsoft and Apple and Amazon and everybody else have where they can add it and Salesforce and, you know, Workday and, you know, Figma and everyone else, some of them, some of which will survive…”
Jul 15, 2026 positive
Aug 16, 2026 negative
Evans: Microsoft Copilot is an umbrella brand of disconnected features like IBM Watson
“Copilot is rather like Watson. It's a brand name that represents an, that represents every single PM at Microsoft had to add an AI feature as part of their quarterly goals. And so every, every third button at Microsoft And every Microsoft product is purple and…”