How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?
by gpi on 4/4/2026, 7:39:43 PM
https://teybannerman.com/strategy/2026/03/31/how-many-microsoft-copilot-are-there.html
Comments
by: simonw
The thing that really confuses me about this is that it has very real negative consequences. I cannot have a conversation about Copilot!<p>If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about.<p>And if I ask them (which I always do) they <i>still</i> have trouble describing the product, because Microsoft give them no help at all. How DO you explain that something was the Copilot thing that's a feature on GitHub.com that shows up in the web interface there, as opposed to whatever the heck other forms of GitHub Copilot.<p>(Amusingly there are 15 "GitHub Copilot..." products listed on the linked website and I can't tell which if any of those 15 corresponds to the chat UI on the logged in GitHub.com homepage, or that's available in the "Agents" tab in a repository.)<p>Surely Microsoft feel this pain all the time? Bug reports in "Copilot" must be almost impossible to interpret.
4/5/2026, 4:22:38 AM
by: thedelanyo
Someone said - in Linux, everything is a file. In Microsoft, everything is a copilot. Lol.
4/4/2026, 9:39:58 PM
by: dwedge
Microsoft has always seemed to be a little chaotic and buggy in everything it did, but it was always dominant and assertive. Recently it seems like they might be about to do the impossible and throw away that market position - their cloud is imploding, they all but gave up on their AI goals, apparently the Windows UI is designed now by employees who use Macs so never use their own dog food, and while I don't believe all the people saying they'll move the Linux, I'm wondering what it takes for a few large businesses to make to the macbook Neo. At this point it's mostly 365 holding people in, and that's cross compatible
4/5/2026, 6:31:52 AM
by: lateforwork
Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI. How many products have Copilot? Just about all of them.
4/4/2026, 8:29:05 PM
by: chatmasta
I don’t use windows, so most of this doesn’t affect me, but I do use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all, whether “GitHub Copilot” and “VSCode Copilot” (sic?) are the same product? The documentation isn’t even clear, and it’s important because it affects billing. How do these two products interact and where do they NOT overlap?<p>This confusion even bleeds into other coding harnesses. I have no idea which GitHub MCP server I setup in Claude Code, but the domain has “githubcopilot” in it. Am I burning copilot tokens (or “requests” or whatever is their billing unit) when I use this from Claude?
4/4/2026, 8:44:03 PM
by: quag
It reminds me of around 2002 when Microsoft named everything ".net".
4/4/2026, 8:27:07 PM
by: chatmasta
Related: a list of all Microsoft login portals (there are 609 of them).<p><a href="https://msportals.io/" rel="nofollow">https://msportals.io/</a>
4/4/2026, 9:49:08 PM
by: uda
It's a corporate practice they find hard to shake, and sadly enough, it seems to work.<p>The idea is about platform solutions vs. best of breed, and they keep betting on the platform. In big organizations with lengthy and complex contracting procedures, platform solutions will always win.<p>The actual solution for the economy is Interoperability, if we fight for governments to require it, we can get platform providers that allow best of breed bundles. We will gain open market platforms, where you choose the market platform that works for you with the combination of solutions that work for you with one or just few contracts. Markets that close themselves or fight their vendors will lose both vendors and customers.
4/5/2026, 1:19:36 PM
by: guidedlight
Surprisingly, I immediately noticed that “Gaming Copilot” is missing (i.e. The version of Copilot that Microsoft shoehorned into the Xbox mobile app).
4/4/2026, 8:36:39 PM
by: BirAdam
The only Microsoft products I’ve actively heard people desire within the last 5 years are VSCode and Excel. Microsoft have so severely damaged their brand that they’ve finally shed the image of oddly gray Dell midtowers running XP on Pentium 4.
4/4/2026, 9:01:22 PM
by: schappim
Microsoft is not alone in this. Apple does the same thing!<p>There is Siri on iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, Apple TV, and CarPlay and are all different different incarnation of Siri (with different capabilities). Then there is everything else like the Siri Remote, Siri Suggestions (and all their types: Siri apps suggestions, Maps, keyboard, Share Sheet, etc), Siri Shortcuts, and Siri Knowledge (WolframAlpha + Wikipedia + other databases?).<p>I'm sure 75% of these will be rebranded "Apple Intelligence" by the end of the year...
4/4/2026, 10:08:39 PM
by: firefoxd
Just this last week, I wrote about the confusion this creates in the workplace[0]. My coworker said "copilot" literally referring to any code assistant, the same way we say bandaid or kleenex. I thought he was talking about Copilot, the one I see nagging me on Microsoft teams. We had a full discussion about completely different tools without realizing it.<p>[0]: <a href="https://idiallo.com/blog/what-is-copilot-exactly" rel="nofollow">https://idiallo.com/blog/what-is-copilot-exactly</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231</a>
4/4/2026, 10:59:54 PM
by: duxup
This reminds me of the old .NET marketing mess where everything was .NET
4/5/2026, 2:35:57 PM
by: TradingPlaces
For a moment it was called Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. Naming things is hard.
4/4/2026, 8:27:13 PM
by: moezd
That's the point: If you receive a bug report about "Copilot" and it will take you forever to triage what's actually broken, then the ticket gets closed because it becomes stale eventually. Therefore you don't have a complaint anymore!
4/5/2026, 6:07:44 AM
by: billforsternz
I remember Joel of Joel on Software publicly working through the process of creating a remote desktop for normals type product called Copilot back in the day. If I remember correctly he had to pay quite a pretty penny to acquire copilot.com.<p>I wonder if MS Copilot meant he made money on that investment?
4/5/2026, 4:46:16 AM
by: ajaimk
Is this more than Google's Hangouts?
4/5/2026, 3:38:44 PM
by: OJFord
I think it's fair enough that 'the assistant in the GUI/cloud program X, like Clippy++' has the same name for all X.<p>But it's absolutely bonkers that that's the same name as the IDE auto-complete integration, and the GitHub agentic worker, and the GitHub chat, and the GitHub reviewer.
4/5/2026, 12:37:03 PM
by: nlawalker
I actually was just thinking about doing something very similar for this but for "agent," specifically in the Microsoft ecosystem. There are a zillion different proper nouns (products, services, frameworks, toolkits and tools, SDKs etc.) containing "agent" now, plus a bunch of other things that are now "agentic".
4/4/2026, 8:42:19 PM
by: georgeburdell
Reminds me of the 2010s when IBM called everything Watson
4/4/2026, 8:42:05 PM
by: gwf
It's the new .NET in that it been so overused as to become almost meaningless.
4/4/2026, 8:28:33 PM
by: ieie3366
Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have been the first mass market LLM product (2022-2023 code autocomplete) but they completely ensloppified it
4/4/2026, 8:28:34 PM
by: leokennis
While Microsoft in general is a mess, this article is like saying: what even is “save”? Microsoft has 1286 save products! Save in Word, Save in Paint, Save in Notepad…<p>Copilot means there’s a button/menu/command in the Microsoft app/site/tool that allows the user to pass whatever text/file/site/context/prompt is on the screen to the Copilot AI backend so it can summarize/transform/expand/explain it, and then have the user wait an inordinate amount of time for a mediocre response.
4/5/2026, 8:26:33 AM
by:
4/5/2026, 11:29:20 AM
by: r0m4n0
To be fair, Google does it too. I just had the product I work on renamed to Gemini Enterprise. Sure we use Gemini but it’s confusing because it’s not really an “enterprise” version of Gemini. It’s just a way to name drop what it uses under the hood. This was our third rename in 4 years so probably will change again soon
4/4/2026, 9:06:23 PM
by: gucci_breakfast
What an absolutely ridiculous and deeply unserious organization
4/5/2026, 3:15:31 AM
by: ape4
Didn't they rename everything "dotnet" when that was the hot thing
4/5/2026, 11:59:27 AM
by: claysmithr
I can't wait for Copilot Copilot for Copilot 365 X Copilot X
4/5/2026, 12:15:53 AM
by: amelius
And where is Microsoft Flight Attendant, I need a cup of coffee.
4/5/2026, 12:23:05 PM
by: nfw2
Is there a copilot for Microsoft flight simulator though?
4/5/2026, 1:14:41 AM
by: Dwedit
I have personally nullified one of those, namely the Copilot Key. It took a low level keyboard hook, and blocking a specific sequence of keys, then injecting the right ctrl key back.
4/4/2026, 10:32:23 PM
by: tosti
So... That means all of those products are for entertainment purposes only. Truth in advertising!
4/5/2026, 10:14:40 AM
by: tedk-42
Microsoft slowly becoming the IBM of the 21st century.
4/4/2026, 11:11:18 PM
by: cylemons
I guess Microsoft wants us to think about all these copilots as a single product.<p>Like, "the copilot in visual studio", "the copilot on github", "the copilot on office" etc.
4/5/2026, 5:18:17 AM
by: billforsternz
We should probably be grateful Microsoft didn't name it .NET
4/5/2026, 4:42:57 AM
by: butz
Yes.
4/5/2026, 2:55:32 PM
by: yunnpp
Plot twist: he used Copilot to generate the figure.
4/4/2026, 8:26:48 PM
by: EvanAnderson
Microsoft is uniquely unable to name / brand anything sensibly:<p>"Outlook" / "Outlook Web Access" / "Outlook Web App" / "Outlook.com" / "new Outlook for Windows" / "Outlook (classic)"<p>.NET: .NET Framework. ASP.NET. .NET Core. Windows .NET Server. Ugh...)<p>The love of the term "Explorer": "Internet Explorer" / "Windows Explorer" / "File Explorer" / "MSN Explorer"<p>Similarly is the love of "Defender": "Windows Defender" / "Microsoft Defender" / "Windows Defender Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows Defender Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection"<p>"Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products)<p>Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server platform "Exchange"<p>"Microsoft Teams" / "New Microsoft Teams" / "Microsoft Teams for Business"<p>"Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site Server" / "Site Server Commerce Edition" / "Office Server" / "SharePoint Portal Server" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer"<p>"Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "Skype for Business" / "Skype" / "Skype for Business Online" / "Skype for Business for Microsoft 365"<p>Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows App".<p>The old "System Management Server" became "System Center" and its family of products.<p>There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too:<p>"Great Plains" / "Dynamics GP" / "Navision" / "Dynamics NAV" / "Solomon" / "Dynamics SL" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" / "Dynamics 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" / "Dynamics 365 Business Central"<p>(For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0])<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update_Notification_Utility" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update...</a>
4/4/2026, 9:15:58 PM
by: aimadetools
It's a classic Microsoft branding mess. I have to stop and think which one they mean every time I see an article about it now.
4/5/2026, 6:47:27 AM
by: giancarlostoro
Its annoying especially since Copilot exists in Visual Studio (Code too I believe) and its not exactly "the same" thing as far as I can tell. I really hate Microsoft's naming conventions. At least call that one Copilot for Devs or something more meaningful.
4/4/2026, 8:24:33 PM
by: starkeeper
How many windows services or low level system dlls has Microsoft lost the source code for and or does not even know what they actually do?<p>Copilot does not know either but I'm sure the answer is a much bigger number then anyone would be comfortable with.
4/5/2026, 12:11:20 AM
by: Tiereven
I guess if Copilot were actually a singular entity that had all of these touch points and a decent security model to prevent unintentionally exposing your data - it would be pretty cool.
4/5/2026, 12:31:40 AM
by: CrzyLngPwd
Surely it's just a synonym for 'agent' or 'helper'.
4/5/2026, 7:32:36 AM
by: shykes
This pattern seems to repeat itself often in large tech companies. Does anyone remember SAP Hana?
4/5/2026, 5:39:22 AM
by: 2OEH8eoCRo0
It sucks they got rid of Cortana. The thought of being Master Chief with a Cortana of your own sounds badass.
4/4/2026, 8:57:08 PM
by: Razengan
It's MSN, Plus, Live, Surface, 365 all over again
4/4/2026, 8:19:06 PM
by: claaams
No one can ruin microslops branding better than microslop.
4/4/2026, 8:41:52 PM
by: jmorenoamor
I think they should start to think about having a pilot.
4/5/2026, 5:45:59 AM
by: mandeepj
It's not a product, but enablement or a feature! Just like a 'Pro' label :-)
4/5/2026, 12:41:19 AM
by: benatkin
Before any of these Copilots, there was Project Aardvark. It was a summer project by Joel Spolsky's company Fog Creek Software in which they created a remote desktop product called Copilot. They made a documentary about it: <a href="https://youtu.be/YbrkZ07LKbk?si=LAYznsR6Zd1YdGkb" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/YbrkZ07LKbk?si=LAYznsR6Zd1YdGkb</a>
4/5/2026, 1:04:07 PM
by: ampedcast
Was copilot branding restricted only to their AI products?
4/5/2026, 4:35:44 AM
by: stephenlf
Microsoft yearns for the flight simulator.
4/4/2026, 8:19:53 PM
by: ChicagoDave
If this isn’t an indictment of MS management (pun intended), I don’t know what is.
4/4/2026, 11:24:59 PM
by: mirekrusin
They should have called it Micro.
4/4/2026, 8:39:49 PM
by: bmenrigh
Reminds me of around 2002 when MS slapped “.Net” onto everything.
4/5/2026, 12:23:25 AM
by: triage8004
Windows is the harness for Copilot
4/5/2026, 5:44:48 AM
by: shireboy
I get that it's annoying, but also don't know what else one would do? "FooPilot is our Office AI toolset, BarWonk is our code assist tool"? There are also a lot of Claudes and GPTs. Naming things is hard.
4/4/2026, 9:20:54 PM
by: ilovecake1984
It’s terrible, because a lot of the thing named copilot are not very good, which poisons the brand.
4/5/2026, 4:34:26 AM
by: jaffa2
Isn’t it just their AI llm thing?
4/4/2026, 8:25:44 PM
by: Traubenfuchs
How many of those are used regularly by more than 0.1% users?
4/4/2026, 10:39:55 PM
by: yieldcrv
The real question is how many products could AWS call the same thing<p>two extremes at play here. A single brand name masquarading as the same product, versus a hundred brand names that don’t tell you a thing about what the product is<p>Kind of why I’m fond of GCP now. Just name it what it is
4/4/2026, 9:41:10 PM
by: ChrisArchitect
Related/same discussion:<p><i>What Is Copilot Exactly?</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231</a>
4/4/2026, 8:33:28 PM
by: booleandilemma
I don't understand, usually Microsoft is so good at naming things!
4/5/2026, 5:14:34 AM
by: rdsubhas
Blame brain dead product managers who merely want to hoist their poor quality yearly performance review slop on something existing that carries SEO/SEM value.<p>Most of the time, these piggy backers only pull down the value of what they're riding on.
4/4/2026, 9:48:22 PM
by: paulddraper
> A few weeks ago, I tried to explain to someone what Microsoft Copilot is. I couldn’t<p>It means Microsoft AI.<p>Hope that helps!
4/5/2026, 2:08:56 AM
by: BikeRanger
We just call it Cope. Azure Cope. GitHub Cope. SharePoint Cope. Etc.
4/5/2026, 12:07:50 AM
by: walrus01
This is what happens when you have some sort of top-down directive from the C-level people to put "AI" in everything, and dozens of department/project managers who all have their own fiefdoms
4/4/2026, 9:21:28 PM
by: Handy-Man
It's just one brand: Copilot
4/4/2026, 8:52:23 PM
by:
4/4/2026, 8:32:49 PM
by: senectus1
approximately the same number of products they have called "surface"
4/5/2026, 2:25:00 AM
by: KnuthIsGod
Slop-Pilot for Copilot.<p>One could argue that it is an oxymoron.
4/5/2026, 4:05:25 AM
by: sublinear
> .. the name ‘Copilot’ now refers to at least 75 different things. Apps, features, platforms, a keyboard key, an entire category of laptops - and a tool for building more Copilots. All named ‘Copilot’.<p>Right, so then it's not a "product", or even a range of "products".<p>It's a brand name and inherently pointless to map out. It doesn't even have to involve any "AI" to be given the branding. All that matters is it's a thing they have, new or old, that they'd like to push people towards.
4/4/2026, 8:26:43 PM
by: faragon
"All your Copilot are belong to us"
4/5/2026, 7:52:33 AM
by: xyst
Microslop trying really hard to shove copilot shite down our throats
4/5/2026, 2:59:56 AM
by: eboy
[dead]
4/5/2026, 4:05:04 PM
by: wei03288
[dead]
4/5/2026, 9:04:36 AM
by: throwaway87543
Okay. But how many products have Gemini or Claude in the name?
4/4/2026, 8:35:05 PM
by: 1a527dd5
Ignoring the disaster that is their branding/naming.<p>Copilot is _amazing_. Everyone is hyping about Claude, but I'm way more productive with the copilot cli. The copilot cloud agent is great, and copilot code review is great (we also tried the new very expensive claude code review - it was slow and expensive).<p>Forget that it's Microsoft, forget that everything is Copilot and go and give it a shot.
4/4/2026, 9:47:51 PM