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Speaker 1: Hey Max here. Last week Bloomberg published a story that

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Speaker 1: I wrote with reporter Dina Bass about Microsoft Exel, that is,

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Speaker 1: the spreadsheet software which for the last forty years has

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Speaker 1: been a source of awesome innovation and also endless frustration

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Speaker 1: for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of business people.

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Speaker 1: It's a really fun and really nerdy story, and as

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Speaker 1: part of it, Dina and I worked with our daily podcast,

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Speaker 1: The Big Take to turn it into a podcast episode.

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Speaker 1: We're really happy with how it came out, and we

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Speaker 1: wanted to share it with you here. So thanks to

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Speaker 1: Dina as well as host Sarah Holder and the entire

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Speaker 1: Big Take team, and without further ado, here is the

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Speaker 1: episode Why We Can't Quit Microsoft Excel, first published December fourth.

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Speaker 2: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

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Speaker 3: This week in Las Vegas, group of elite players faced

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Speaker 3: off to compete for a coveted world championship title.

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Speaker 1: Everyone seems to know the score.

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Speaker 2: It really does feel like you're, you know, at Madison

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Speaker 2: Square Garden watching the Knicks starting five run out what

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Speaker 2: I've seen Andrew Dewey with a little bit less excitement.

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Speaker 3: Maybe the competitors enter the arena through a tunnel pro sports.

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Speaker 2: Style, everybody runs out to cheers, you know, befitting their

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Speaker 2: celebrity and skill in the world of spreadsheets. The championship,

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Speaker 2: who is going to win?

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Speaker 3: Yep, that's right, We're talking about the World Championship of

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Speaker 3: Microsoft excel. Dina Bass, who's covered Microsoft for decades and

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Speaker 3: now writes about AI, says since the first competition in

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Speaker 3: twenty twelve, Microsoft Excelling has become something of serious esport.

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Speaker 3: All right, audience, we're gonna need your help. We're gonna

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Speaker 3: count it down. We're gonna start it five, let's go.

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Speaker 3: Fuck it even has commentators three two.

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Speaker 2: What have you ever seen like video game speed running

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Speaker 2: where people try to finish like a Mario game as

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Speaker 2: quickly as possible. That also has that like fla by

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Speaker 2: play commentary, because otherwise, like normal people wouldn't understand what's

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Speaker 2: going on. They sort of give them something to solve,

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Speaker 2: and you're watching it, but it moves so quickly you

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Speaker 2: kind of don't know what you're watching.

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Speaker 1: The right side of the screen as well, if you're

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Speaker 1: wondering what's flashing on the right side there those are

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Speaker 1: his keys and as shortcuts.

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Speaker 3: So obviously ht this level what you're watching these pro

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Speaker 3: spreadsheeters do isn't too different from what millions of office

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Speaker 3: workers around the country do every day, sit at a

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Speaker 3: computer and put numbers into cells.

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Speaker 1: The genesis of this competition was financial modeling.

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Speaker 3: That's Max Chafkin, who writes for BusinessWeek and co host

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Speaker 3: the magazine's podcast Everybody's Business.

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Speaker 1: So you to be a competition to see who is

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Speaker 1: the best at financial modeling, which is of course how

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Speaker 1: most people use Microsoft Excel, and they changed it a

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Speaker 1: couple of years back to make it more accessible. So

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Speaker 1: now what they model our games. But at the end

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Speaker 1: of the day, viewers are like looking at a spreadsheet,

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Speaker 1: like a normal Excel spreadsheet with and there's like a

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Speaker 1: little little mini screen inside, like an inset screen like

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Speaker 1: on a video game where you see the athlete, you know,

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Speaker 1: clicking the mouse and like and manipulating the you know,

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Speaker 1: the cells.

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Speaker 3: It's not exactly an NBA game, But watch an Excel

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Speaker 3: wizard input functions at warp speed, and your pulse might

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Speaker 3: start racing, which is not the kind of emotion people

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Speaker 3: usually associate with Excel. Somehow, despite its association with badly

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Speaker 3: lit offices and boring capitalist gruntwork, Excel has become one

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Speaker 3: of the most influential computer programs in the world, and

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Speaker 3: not just in the world of esports.

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Speaker 1: Excel is like the most I think it's like probably

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Speaker 1: the most important piece of software that has ever been created. Basically,

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Speaker 1: like it runs almost every single business, it runs, every

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Speaker 1: single nonprofit it runs, like any big organization you can

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Speaker 1: think about is in some sense operating on Microsoft ex

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Speaker 1: Cel because it's the dominant spreadsheet platform.

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Speaker 3: I'm Sarah Holder and this is the big take from

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Speaker 3: Bloomberg News Today on the show. Microsoft Excel is now

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Speaker 3: forty years old in an age of AI and Google Sheets,

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Speaker 3: Can it last another forty? For many people, Microsoft Excel's

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Speaker 3: classic green and white grid and it's seemingly infinite scroll

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Speaker 3: of columns and rows bring up strong feelings.

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Speaker 1: How do you feel about microsoftic Cell?

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Speaker 2: I love using it.

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Speaker 3: This is something our producer David Fox discovered walking around

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Speaker 3: New York City's Bryant Park during a lunch break.

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Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite XL formula or function?

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Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I mean it's really basic, but I

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Speaker 3: love account IF or account A X look up HTA

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Speaker 3: is a good one.

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Speaker 1: I use a lot of advance statements and like being

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Speaker 1: able to like coffy things, you know, when you just

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Speaker 1: drag the cursor down.

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Speaker 3: I mean, if you're really a pro, you don't use

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Speaker 3: the mouse, but I will use the mouse just for efficiency.

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Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Dina Bass and Max Chafkin say those kinds of

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Speaker 3: reactions are pretty typical.

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Speaker 2: Excel just symbolizes drudgery, right, It's every workplace movie stereotype.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's the office in Slough, it's office space

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Speaker 2: in your Nine Bosses. The user interface is dull. It

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Speaker 2: hasn't really changed much.

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Speaker 1: It's also and this was suggested to me by miss

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Speaker 1: Kpor who's a spreadsheet pioneer, but it's also an embodiment

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Speaker 1: of the things that we hate most about capitalism, right,

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Speaker 1: Like Excel is about cutting costs, it's about optimizing if

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Speaker 1: you get laid off, like guaranteed you were laid off

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Speaker 1: because of a cell on an Excel spreadsheet. And I

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Speaker 1: think we all like kind of understand that it's like

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Speaker 1: the on fun parts of capitalism.

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Speaker 3: Right, Like we're all just numbers in an Excel file.

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Speaker 1: Exactly to day. I mean, I think for many people,

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Speaker 1: including many power users, it's like it is like a

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Speaker 1: thing that they hate and a thing that they also appreciate.

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Speaker 1: The thing for me that kind of epitomize this. There's

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Speaker 1: a very active community on Reddit for Excel. The most

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Speaker 1: popular post of all time is somebody explaining how to

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Speaker 1: watch Wall E inside of Microsoft Excel in order to

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Speaker 1: trick their company's workplace software into thinking that they're using

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Speaker 1: Excel when they're in fact watching a movie.

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Speaker 3: So they're on Excel for like an hour and forty

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Speaker 3: five minutes, but they're just I love.

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Speaker 1: It because it totally epitomizes. First of all, this software

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Speaker 1: is insanely powerful, Like you can add up numbers, but

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Speaker 1: you can also run full on programs, and yet like

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Speaker 1: with all of that power, what you're doing is getting

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Speaker 1: around the fact that you have to use the software

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Speaker 1: in the first place.

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Speaker 3: There are something like five hundred million paying Excel users

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Speaker 3: out there, according to Max and Dina's calculations based on

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Speaker 3: Microsoft's public disclosures. Those users range from Excel social media

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Speaker 3: influencers to employees at the US Department of War Finance, guys,

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Speaker 3: college students, and people like Steve Balmer.

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Speaker 4: Most people think it's pretty weird. I keep a spreadsheet

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Speaker 4: of how I spend my hours.

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Speaker 1: When we interviewed Steve Balmer, he was like, oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, like, I'm not really an Excel guy. And

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Speaker 1: then he showed us all these, like all the insane

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Speaker 1: ways that he was using it.

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Speaker 3: Steve Balmer headed Microsoft sales in the eighties and went

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Speaker 3: on to become the company's CEO. He now owns the

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Speaker 3: Los Angeles Clippers.

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Speaker 4: Okay, can you guys see that?

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, o god.

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Speaker 3: He showed Max and Dina the Excel spreadsheet he uses

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Speaker 3: to organize his life.

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Speaker 4: So this is kind of my spreadsheet twenty five budget,

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Speaker 4: twenty twenty five actual year to date? How many nights

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Speaker 4: in my way from home? What nights were they?

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Speaker 2: I've known Steve Balmer for more than two decades. His

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Speaker 2: entire brain is just a series of endless spreadsheets. That's

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Speaker 2: the way he thinks.

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Speaker 1: I of course asked him, like, where's the bathroom time go?

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Speaker 1: He's like, oh, that's personal time.

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Speaker 4: Everything nine to five I keep track of and anything

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Speaker 4: clippers at night.

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Speaker 3: Extreme as it may be, Balmer's spreadsheet habit speaks to

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Speaker 3: how Excel has morph from a computational tool to a

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Speaker 3: ubiquitous part of people's everyday lives. But how did the

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Speaker 3: digital spreadsheet revolution start? Max says it begins in the

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Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, not with Microsoft or Excel, but with a

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Speaker 3: program called VisiCalc.

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Speaker 1: We spoke to the inventor of Visical, this guy named

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Speaker 1: Dan Bricklin, who dreamed it up while he was in

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Speaker 1: a business school class. There are things that look like spreadsheets,

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Speaker 1: you know, from ancient Mesopotamia. But like he was like,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't it be great if you could have one of

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Speaker 1: these tables with numbers where it just calculates instantly. And

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Speaker 1: he created, with a co founder, Bob Frankston, basically this

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Speaker 1: kind of rough hewn spreadsheet called Visical for the Apple too.

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Speaker 1: It really was, I think the thing that started the

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Speaker 1: personal computing revolution.

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Speaker 3: At the time, computers were mostly used by universities or

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Speaker 3: large companies. They weren't in lots of people's homes or

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Speaker 3: in most people's desks at work. But big technology companies

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Speaker 3: like Microsoft were hoping to change that.

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Speaker 2: Microsoft's like early motto was you know, a computer on

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Speaker 2: every desk and in every home running Microsoft software. But

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Speaker 2: the problem is you have to convince people that they

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Speaker 2: want this. Why would anybody want their own one of

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Speaker 2: these things.

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Speaker 3: Microsoft realized that spreadsheet software could be part of that

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Speaker 3: pitch for selling more personal computers, so they decided to

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Speaker 3: take what VisiCalc pioneered and iterate on it. They started

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Speaker 3: working on a digital spreadsheet competitor. Was there a moment

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Speaker 3: when Microsoft kind of realized this could be a really

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Speaker 3: big deal for them as a company.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they knew from the jump. By the time

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Speaker 1: the Excel project started in eighty three, which was originally

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Speaker 1: called Project Odyssey, spreadsheets were a thing, Like everyone knew

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Speaker 1: that there were basically like two cool things you could

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Speaker 1: do with a computer. One was word processing like desktop publishing,

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Speaker 1: and the other is spreadsheets. So Microsoft's like frantically like

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Speaker 1: trying to like make their own spreadsheet and they made.

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Speaker 1: They made this original one which was like a VisiCalc

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Speaker 1: knockoff called Multiplan that did not work out, and then

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Speaker 1: they started working on another knockoff, which was a Lotus knockoff.

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Speaker 1: Lotus being like at the time, the most successful spreadsheet program,

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Speaker 1: And they made this decision which I think in retrospect

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Speaker 1: it looks inspired to put it on the Mac, and

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Speaker 1: not only did that help like propel the Mac, it

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Speaker 1: also ends up propelling Microsoft, because spreadsheets using this kind

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Speaker 1: of graphical interface, the point and click thing, it's just

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Speaker 1: like a way more elegant version of the experience, and

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Speaker 1: that then sort of propels Excel to become the dominant

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Speaker 1: spreadsheet platform. And then that gets juiced by like a

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Speaker 1: ton of sort of Microsoft you know, hard nosed business behavior.

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Speaker 3: One of the key business strategies was selling subscriptions to

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Speaker 3: several of their software apps together as a package. That

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Speaker 3: package was called Microsoft Office.

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Speaker 1: I think if you're trying to understay, like, how did

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Speaker 1: Microsoft sort of use Excel to propel itself to this dominance? Like,

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Speaker 1: in one word, it's bundling. As Microsoft evolved into the nineties,

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Speaker 1: they start making all these deals with big companies and

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Speaker 1: with computer manufacturers, so it becomes this like thing where

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Speaker 1: you can't really switch your spreadsheet without making a bunch

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Speaker 1: of other changes that could be potentially disruptive to your business.

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Speaker 2: The bundle got even bigger sort of in the cloud era,

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Speaker 2: because ultimately Microsoft winds up doing this you know cloud

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Speaker 2: license offering where if you're a corporation, every employee gets

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Speaker 2: everything in one thing, but ends up becoming it ends

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Speaker 2: up being called Microsoft three sixty five and you can't

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Speaker 2: take those pieces apart. And look, I had a CIO

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Speaker 2: tell me while I was researching a different story about

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Speaker 2: a year ago, that his CEO was trying to figure

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Speaker 2: out how they could save money on software, and came

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Speaker 2: over to him and said, look, you know, I personally

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Speaker 2: don't use Excel. Can you go to Microsoft and you

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Speaker 2: can see some money on my license. I don't need Excel,

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Speaker 2: don't pay them for Excel for me. And the CIO

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Speaker 2: just looked at a CEO like you, sweet summer child,

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Speaker 2: that that is not a thing.

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Speaker 3: With the benefit of hindsight. How important was Excel in

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Speaker 3: turning Microsoft into the company that it is today.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's no Microsoft, the four trillion

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Speaker 1: almost four trillion dollar, you know, market cap company that

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Speaker 1: dominates the business software market without Excel.

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Speaker 3: In four decades, Excel has managed to conquer the corporate

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Speaker 3: world and seep into our culture, but it's no longer

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Speaker 3: the only game in town. The challenges to Excel's dominance

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Speaker 3: that's coming up next. When Microsoft Excel was first released

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Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty five, it built on the work of

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Speaker 3: early digital spreadsheet programs like VisiCalc and Lotus and pretty

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Speaker 3: much Since then, Excel has been synonymous with spreadsheets, but

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Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Dina Bass says that hasn't stopped other companies from

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Speaker 3: trying to compete with it, like Google, which introduced Google

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Speaker 3: Sheets in two thousand and six.

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Speaker 2: Several people we spoke to, including you know, Ray Azi,

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Speaker 2: who after his time at Lotus actually ended up at

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Speaker 2: Microsoft working on their cloud strategy, you know, said to us, Look,

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Speaker 2: you know, people thought we thought sheets was going to

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Speaker 2: and just Google's office competitors in general were going to

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Speaker 2: be the thing that you know, took out Excel, but

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Speaker 2: it just never really happened. And look, I mean, Google

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Speaker 2: does have a number of their office competitor is particularly

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Speaker 2: strong in schools. You know, most kids when they go

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Speaker 2: to school, they get a Chromebook and it comes with

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Speaker 2: the Google applications, And so you end up with a

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Speaker 2: generation and people that are growing up not using Office

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Speaker 2: but instead using the Google rivals. And so there has

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Speaker 2: been this question, I think for the last ten years

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Speaker 2: or so about what would happen when those folks hit

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Speaker 2: the workforce. But we're still really not seeing a mass

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Speaker 2: migration away from office. It seems like when you hit

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Speaker 2: the workforce, you get assigned your office license.

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Speaker 3: So far Excel has managed to fend off its free,

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Speaker 3: cloud based competitor, but now it's also confronting another big

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Speaker 3: technological shift. I have to ask what about AI? What

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Speaker 3: kind of threat does AI post to Excel?

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Speaker 1: So if you think, like at the furthest remove, the

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Speaker 1: promise of AI is it's going to take a large

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Speaker 1: amount of data of information and allow you to ask

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Speaker 1: questions of it and get answers in an easy way.

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Speaker 1: And that's like what a spreadsheet does. And so there

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Speaker 1: are lots of potential Excel competitors. There are sort of

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Speaker 1: like AI versions of Excel. There are these kind of

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Speaker 1: like AI tools that are designed essentially to work with Excel.

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Speaker 1: But like part of the problem is that these AI

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Speaker 1: tools are really just either copycats of Excel, like they're

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Speaker 1: sort of just like doing exactly what Excel does, or

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Speaker 1: they're just little pieces that are designed to work with Excel.

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Speaker 1: So it's like an AI assistant that will spit out

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Speaker 1: a spreadsheet, but that spreadsheet ends up being an Excel file.

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Speaker 1: But then there's an other issue with AI, which is

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Speaker 1: like AI is not great at math, like just the

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Speaker 1: like just like the most basic Excel function is like

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Speaker 1: some like add up a big long list of numbers,

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Speaker 1: and like large language models are not awesome at computation

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Speaker 1: because like they're going for approximation, not the perfect answers.

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Speaker 1: And then the other thing is AI models are really

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Speaker 1: bad at, like at telling you why they arrived at

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Speaker 1: a given answer, and that is the thing that spreadsheets

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Speaker 1: are awesome at.

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Speaker 3: And Dina says that even some of the AI products

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Speaker 3: that are aiming to replace Excel still rely on spreadsheets

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Speaker 3: to manage their data.

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Speaker 2: What people are trying to do is not reinvent the

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Speaker 2: underlying spreadsheet layer. It's you know, basically create a pilot

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Speaker 2: or an assistant that works on top of the data

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Speaker 2: in the spreadsheet and answers questions for you. Now, Microsoft

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Speaker 2: of course is trying to do the same thing with

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Speaker 2: their copilot.

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Speaker 1: And so even if you're using an AI algorithm to

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Speaker 1: generate a spreadsheet, my guess is it's gonna spit it

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Speaker 1: out and you're gonna be right back and Microsoft Excel

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Speaker 1: just like your parents and maybe even your grandparents were.

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Speaker 3: Max says there might be something deeper at play here,

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Speaker 3: something intangible that's kept people coming back to Excel year

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Speaker 3: after year.

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Speaker 1: Maybe there is something fundamental to a spreadsheet that like

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Speaker 1: we wouldn't actually want to process data in another way

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Speaker 1: that like, really, this is just like a table of numbers.

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Speaker 1: Like I said, people have been using tables of numbers

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Speaker 1: for a very long time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, if it was good enough for mesopotagics.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's how Steve Bamber's brain works. Maybe

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Speaker 1: it's how all of our brains work in some sense.

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Speaker 1: And like the prospect of trying to reinvent that it

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Speaker 1: doesn't make that much sense, which is why, like Dina said,

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Speaker 1: like Microsoft strategy is not to make an AI version

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Speaker 1: of Excel. It's just have like an assistant inside of Excel.

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Speaker 1: That and this is you know, barring the language that

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Speaker 1: Microsoft executives use when they talk about it, but it's

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Speaker 1: basically like they want to make you as good as

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Speaker 1: the world champion three two one, and we dine Wow,

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Speaker 1: So you watch those world champions on TV, you're really impressed,

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Speaker 1: You're thrilled. A huge congratulations to our twenty twenty five

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Speaker 1: Microsoft Excel World Champion Deer mid Early. And now you,

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Speaker 1: with the help of Copilot, can do the same kinds

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Speaker 1: of advanced modeling that they do. I don't think it's

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Speaker 1: quite there yet, but that's the that's the promise.

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Speaker 3: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.

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Speaker 3: To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access

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Speaker 3: to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg

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Speaker 3: dot com slash podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be

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Speaker 3: back tomorrow.

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Speaker 4: Mm hm