Fleeing Microsoft? The advice splitting investors in two

Fleeing Microsoft: a recommendation that splits the market in two

Good advice? Depends on who you ask. While some investors see Microsoft as a dinosaur with its days numbered, others see the same money-making machine as always. The question is nothing new: the Redmond giant has always been late to everything, except the cloud, where Azure props up the bottom line. The question is whether that advantage makes up for a product catalogue that, to many, smells of mothballs.

The dark side of the empire

Microsoft built its legend by copying and swallowing up rivals: browsers, phones, consoles. The list of failures is long. Xbox burns money, its browser never took off, and Windows is dead weight kept alive by inertia. Now, in the AI race, Copilot is struggling to get off the ground: subscriptions at a mere 20 euros a month fall short of expectations. The harshest critics point out that the real business is Azure, and that without it the stock wouldn't hold up. Even almighty Office 365 is starting to feel the heat from tools like Canva or Claude Excel, which are winning over younger users and leaving Microsoft with a clientele of "boomer bosses". Some also argue the company never developed its own AI model and simply allied itself with OpenAI, a "losing horse" that has yet to turn a profit.

The numbers don't argue (for now)

The other camp reminds us that the numbers rule. Azure has been delivering results for years, the company generates growing revenue from Office subscriptions, and the OpenAI bet — with a 27% stake — could turn the tide. Microsoft's historical strategy isn't to innovate, but to wait, absorb and crush. It's what some call "embrace, extend, extinguish". And it worked with GitHub, with Skype, with LinkedIn. Why wouldn't it work with AI? Some even see a clear technical floor: one investor admitted buying in at 359 dollars, a level he considered the two-year low. "It's been around too long", he said, to write it off as dead.

The geopolitical factor that doesn't make the brochure

Here the contest takes a turn: Microsoft isn't just a company, it's an arm of the US federal government. Industrial espionage through OneDrive and Office 365 is an asset too valuable to let the company sink. The very people recommending an exit point out that the real disruption lies with Palantir, the firm that has become the organizing hub of America's defense and security apparatus. Meanwhile, Europe waves the flag of tech independence — France wants to "break free from Windows" — but runs into a reality: without made-in-USA technology, this continent lands back in 1989. Irony of ironies: really existing capitalism remains a pension plan for the military-industrial complex.

Bottom line: forewarned is not forearmed for nothing. But before selling all your Microsoft shares, remember this contest has been seen before with Google, with Apple, with all of them. The stock keeps hitting annual highs while the doom-mongers bury it. Do your own math. Or better yet, do it with Office's calculator, that software that smells so much of mothballs.