Microsoft faces wall street after its global outage, AWS quietly drops its in-house DevOps solutions and Google goes tone deaf with its AI Olympics commercial.
All this and more on the “Daddy, the AI said to say I love you” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love. Let’s get into it.
We don’t cover a lot of earnings reports in the podcast, but this one caught our attention.
“Microsoft’s latest quarterly results have left investors slightly underwhelmed, with the tech giant’s shares dropping 4% in after-hours trading on Tuesday. Whether that was the results, or the global outage, or a combination, we’re not sure.
The company’s cloud and enterprise software revenue growth showed a slight deceleration compared to the previous quarter.
Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing unit, grew by 29% in the June quarter, just shy of the projected 30% to 31% growth. While this falls short of expectations, it matches the growth rate of Google Cloud, despite Azure being about twice its size.
The business unit including Office 365 commercial subscriptions saw an 11% revenue increase to $20.3 billion, a slight slowdown from the 12% growth in the March quarter.
Microsoft has yet to break out revenue from its new AI-powered Copilots for Office, which launched late last year. And I think that’s what investors are going to be looking for – how much more is their muli-billion dollar investments in AI going to bring in?
As Microsoft continues to integrate AI services into its products, investors and analysts will be watching closely to see how these innovations translate into revenue growth in the coming quarters.”
And by the way, Microsoft has confirmed what an unnamed source told us about the attack. It was a cyber attack and we’ll cover more details on tomorrow’s edition of Cybersecurity Today our security podcast and undoubtedly it will be part of our panel discussion on the weekend show for Cybersecurity Today.
Sources include: The Register
“Amazon Web Services (AWS) has quietly frozen several of its services, signalling a shift away from providing it’s own complete DevOps solution. The services include CodeCommit, Cloud9, and SimpleDB, which were quietly deprecated, catching many customers off guard.
AWS VP Jeff Barr confirmed on social media that they’ve discontinued new access to these services, along with S3 Select, CloudSearch, Forecast, and Data Pipeline. Existing customers can continue using them with ongoing security and reliability updates.
But the lack of formal announcements has led to confusion and frustration among users. Some only discovered the changes when attempting to create new repositories or use AWS templates, which now fail due to these restrictions.
Some reports are that the stealth deprecation has broader implications, potentially breaking AWS Control Tower setups and leaving questions about the future of services like AWS Amplify.
Customers and partners have expressed disappointment with AWS’s communication strategy, learning about these significant changes through forum posts rather than official channels.
The move suggests AWS may be pivoting towards integration with popular third-party services rather than maintaining its own complete DevOps ecosystem. While this could be beneficial, users are calling for more transparency and advance notice in future service changes.
Google has been famous for dropping products or services in the past, but it’s one thing to do this for consumer products or apps, quite another to do it for toolsets used in IT departments.
While it’s an easy thing for a cloud provider to drop a service, companies that use the services, can’t often react that quickly. They have training, recruiting and integrating tools with their processes.
The the adage that is used in corporate change management “you can’t over-communicate” at time of change, may be a lesson to learn from this.
Source: The Information
And Google continues its “can’t win for losing” streak with a bit of a backlash over an it’s newOlympic ad for its Gemini AI.
The ad shows a father using Gemini to help his daughter draft a fan letter to Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
Critics argue the ad promotes lazy parenting and diminishes the personal touch of fan letters.
Shelly Palmer, a media professor at Syracuse University, said, “Instead of guiding her to use her own words and communicate authentically, he (the parent in the ad) is teaching her to rely on AI for this critical human skill.”
Google defends the ad, stating it aims to show how Gemini can provide a starting point for writing. Supporters point out that AI can be a useful tool for overcoming writer’s block and brainstorming ideas.
It’s not CrowdStrike’s “we crashed your systems and ruined your day and cost your company millions – so here’s 10 bucks so when you work all night some of the coffee is on us.”
But it’s still a form letter instead of a kid crafting their own imperfect but heartfelt message.
The debate reflects broader discussions about AI’s role in communication and creativity. While some fear AI might replace human expression, others see it as a tool to enhance it.
As AI continues to integrate into daily life, teaching responsible use becomes crucial. You can be the judge on this one, but I’m siding with Google’s AI
Interestingly, when asked about the ad, Gemini itself responded critically, saying the use of AI for such a personal message “feels disingenuous.”
So even their AI isn’t as tone deaf as they are. It’s a start.
Source: Axios
And that’s our show for today. You can find show notes at our news site technewsday.com or .ca take you pick.
Hashtag Trending is on summer hours so there’s no morning news edition tomorrow, but our weekend show will be released early on Friday.
Thanks for listening. I’m your host Jim Love, have a Thrilling Thursday.
