Because most of Microsoft's revenue is not generated by end-users. It's large government agencies and big corporations where the end-user is ten steps detached from the actual decision to buy or not to buy something.

From the article, "its productivity software is used by hundreds of millions of corporate users, a captive audience to whom it can easily promote new AI products."

Their end users are what they ultimately sell. They are captive audiences. This is what monopolies/platforms do. It's never been part of MSFT's DNA to care that much about end user experience. Who they really cater to are the IT decision makers, etc. These people can then show some numbers about "AI adoption" and "productivity" gains on their Power Point slides presented to their bosses. MSFT's value is delivering that to them.

If you think about the shareholders as their users, being AI-first is being user-first, because it makes number go up.

I thought it was cloud first, or was it mobile first, I don't remember.

This only works in a competitive market, not for monopolistic walled gardens like Microsoft.

[dead]