this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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That’s an odd stance bc at the time it was introduced clippy was almost universally reviled and seen as an example of microsoft taking something that was fine (office 95) and making it objectively worse (office 97 introduced product activation, the stupid paper clip assistant, an arguably dumb UI refresh, and the most hostile part: a new version of the proprietary doc format that wouldn’t render correctly in word 95, forcing people to upgrade)
enshittification wasn’t a concept back then but microsoft certainly lived up to it time and time again
If anything this comic doesn’t make sense because no shit, microsoft started selling your data the nanosecond it became viable to do so. They were always evil. Whereas google at one point literally had a motto of “don’t be evil” in their guidelines or whatever, which fooled a lot of people in the 90s. they famously had to remove because once data collection was becoming obvious it was kind of silly to keep that bit around I suppose
Link here. Clippy never tried to sell our data. He just wanted to help, even if he was bad at it.
He would have tried to sell your data if he could have. Clippy would use Recall 24/7 if he could have.
Are we debating whether we like or dislike the particular flavor of the chosen symbol for consumer activism? "Maybe if it was cornflower blue?"