Why is Microsoft still actively making their products worse?

Question

Why is Microsoft still actively making their products worse?

Mick 15

This question was asked in 2024. It seems like the trajectory has not changed. Why?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4679294/microsoft-is-actively-making-their-products-worse

Features that worked just fine and were very useful for customers are being stripped out. In some cases these core features are being re-labeled "convenience" as justification to break them. New products are getting "General Availability" labeling that are so full of bugs they clearly are not ready to move out of beta.

Microsoft has a long history of shipping half-baked, buggy products. But in the past few years they have gotten even worse. I've joined the ranks of customers who have virtually no trust in Microsoft products anymore.

So why isn't Microsoft listening to customers, actively fixing the culture of "who cares about bugs, just shovel out features customers may or may not want as fast as we can"? Why isn't Microsoft actively working to get back in touch with their customers -- not lip service, but real listening and real change. Does Microsoft even realize how broken it has become as an organization?

I've made my living on Microsoft for decades. Now I'm recommending non-Microsoft products more often than Microsoft products. I have even switched my personal computers over to Ubuntu, because I'm tired of the Windows 11 circus of bugs, not allowing me to control how I want my computer to work (without making obscure registry hacks), and unwanted features that are constantly in my face.

I've tagged this as Azure functions, since I have to tag something and the slop that Azure Function has become is what's frustrating me right now. AWS Lambda is FAR SUPERIOR (something I wouldn't have said a few years back). But this question applies across virtually every Microsoft product now.

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Answer 1

Hi Mick,

There are a few different things being mixed together here.

Microsoft is clearly prioritizing AI and cloud infrastructure investment. In FY2026, Microsoft reported that its Azure and cloud growth was being driven by demand across workloads, while operating expenses and capital spending were being increased substantially for AI engineering and compute capacity.

That does not necessarily mean every product decision is intended to make existing products worse. A lot of what customers experience as regression comes from product consolidation, retirement of older technologies, and moving customers onto newer architectures. Azure Functions is a good example: Microsoft is retiring the Linux Consumption hosting option in 2028 and directing customers to Flex Consumption, while older Functions runtime versions are also being retired.

The other issue is the difference between Preview and GA. Microsoft explicitly says Preview features can change, have limited support, and are not generally intended for production. GA is supposed to represent a fully supported production capability.

So there are legitimate reasons customers can feel that Microsoft is adding churn: frequent platform changes, retirements, migrations, and a very aggressive release cycle. But that is different from Microsoft intentionally deciding to reduce product quality across the board.

For something like Azure Functions, I would judge the change on the specific feature being removed: what replaced it, whether the replacement covers the same use case, migration effort, and whether the replacement is actually more reliable for existing workloads. That gives a much more useful answer than treating all Microsoft products as one problem.

Why is Microsoft *still* actively making their products worse?

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