WEBVTT - How Microsoft Excel Conquered Corporate America 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:08.240 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:12.799 This week in Las Vegas, a group of elite players 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.960 faced off to compete for a coveted world Championship title. 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:21.440 Everyone seems to know the score. 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:24.759 It really does feel like you're, you know, at Madison 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:27.320 Square Garden watching the nick starting five run out. 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:29.680 What I've seen Andrew Dewey. 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:33.279 With a little bit less excitement. 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:37.159 Maybe the competitors enter the arena through a tunnel pro 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:38.040 sports style. 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:43.560 Everybody runs out to cheers, you know, befitting their celebrity 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:47.199 and skill. In the world of spreadsheets, it's the sounds 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:49.840 World Championship. 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:55.960 Who is going away? Yep, that's right, We're talking about 0:00:56.000 --> 0:01:02.040 the World Championship of Microsoft XL. Dina Bass, who's covered 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:06.000 Microsoft for decades and now writes about AI, says since 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:10.720 the first competition in twenty twelve, Microsoft excelling has become 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:13.720 something of a serious esport. All right, audience, we're gonna 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:15.280 need your help. We're gonna count it down, We're gonna 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:17.920 start it five, let's go. Fuck it even has commentators. 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:23.640 Three two. What have you ever seen like video game 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:26.480 speed running where people try to finish like a Mario 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.399 game as quickly as possible. That also has that like 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:33.200 fla by play commentary, because otherwise, like normal people wouldn't 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:36.480 understand what's going on. They sort of give them something 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:38.920 to solve, and you're watching it, but it moves so 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:41.600 quickly you kind of don't know what you're watching. 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:42.440 The right side of the screen as well. 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:44.520 If you're wondering what's flashing on the right side, there 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:46.680 those are his keys and his shortcuts. 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.280 So obviously at this level, what you're watching these pro 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:54.400 spreadsheeters do isn't too different from what millions of office 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.720 workers around the country do every day, sit at a 0:01:57.760 --> 0:01:59.960 computer and put numbers into selling. 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.200 The genesis of this competition was financial modeling. 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:07.880 That's Max Chafkin, who writes for BusinessWeek and co hosts 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:10.480 the magazine's podcast Everybody's Business. 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:12.720 So it used to be a competition to see who 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:14.959 is the best at financial modeling, which is of course 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:18.640 how most people use Microsoft Excel, and they changed it 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:20.839 a couple of years back to make it more accessible. 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:24.639 So now what they model our games. But at the 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.359 end of the day, viewers are like looking at a spreadsheet, 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:30.800 like a normal Excel spreadsheet with and there's like a 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:34.320 little little mini screen inside like an inset screen, like 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:36.800 on a video game where you see the athlete you know, 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.840 clicking the mouse and like and manipulating the you know, 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:41.560 the cells. 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:46.200 It's not exactly an NBA game, but watch an Excel 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:49.840 wizard input functions at warp speed and your pulse might 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:53.239 start racing, which is not the kind of emotion people 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:58.800 usually associate with Excel. Somehow, despite its association with badly 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:03.120 lit offices and boring capitalist gruntwork, Excel has become one 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:06.960 of the most influential computer programs in the world, and 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:09.520 not just in the world of esports. 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:13.840 Excel is like the most I think it's like probably 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.560 the most important piece of software that has ever been created. 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.840 Basically like it runs almost every single business, it runs, 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:27.400 every single nonprofit. It runs like any big organization you 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:31.240 can think about is in some sense operating on Microsoft 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:37.200 Excel because it's the dominant spreadshet platform. 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:39.960 I'm Sarah Holder and this is the big take from 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:44.240 Bloomberg News Today on the show, Microsoft Excel is now 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:48.200 forty years old in an age of AI and Google Sheets, 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:56.400 Can it last another forty? For many people? Microsoft Excel's 0:03:56.480 --> 0:04:00.160 classic green and white grid and it's seemingly infinite scroll 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.840 of columns and rows bring up strong feelings. 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.240 How do you feel about microsophic self? I love using it. 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.440 This is something our producer David Fox discovered walking around 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.080 New York City's Bryant Park during a lunch break. 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:18.000 Do you have a favorite XL formula or function? 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:20.440 Oh, my gosh, I mean it's really basic, but I 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.960 love account IF or account A X look up HTA 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:24.800 is a good one. 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:26.800 I use a lot of advance statements and like being 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.120 able to like coffy things, you know, when you just 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.719 drag the cursor down. I mean, if you're really a pro, 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.440 you don't use the mouse, but I will use the 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:36.520 mouse just for efficiency. 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.320 Bloomberg's Dina Bass and Max Chafkin say those kinds of 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:41.960 reactions are pretty typical. 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:48.520 Excel just symbolizes drudgery, right. It's every workplace movie stereotype. 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.040 You know, it's the office in Slough, it's office space 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:57.800 in your Nine Bosses. The user interface is dull. It 0:04:57.839 --> 0:04:59.520 hasn't really changed much. 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.560 Also, and this was suggested to me by Mitch kap Or, 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:07.599 who's a spreadsheet pioneer. But it's also an embodiment of 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:11.320 the things that we hate most about capitalism, right, Like 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:16.120 Excel is about cutting costs, it's about optimizing if you 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:20.279 get laid off, like guaranteed you were laid off because 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:22.640 of a cell on an Excel spreadsheet. And I think 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.080 we all like kind of understand that it's like the 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.240 one fun parts of capitalism. 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.679 Right, Like we're all just numbers in an Excel file 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:32.480 exactly day. 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:36.040 I mean, I think for many people, including many power users, 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.679 it's like it is like a thing that they hate 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:43.440 and a thing that they also appreciate, the thing for 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.719 me that kind of epitomize this. There's a very active 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:50.240 community on Reddit for Excel. The most popular post of 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:55.000 all time is somebody explaining how to watch Wall E 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:59.560 inside of Microsoft Excel in order to trick their companies 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:04.200 workplace software into thinking that they're using Excel when they're 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:05.080 in fact watching a movie. 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:06.680 So they're on Excel for like an hour and forty 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:08.360 five minutes, but they're just I love. 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:11.520 It because it totally epitomizes. First of all, this software 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:15.159 is insanely powerful, like you can add up numbers, but 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.880 you can also run full on programs, and yet like 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:22.480 with all of that power, what you're doing is getting 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:24.560 around the fact that you have to use the software 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:25.279 in the first place. 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:29.000 There are something like five hundred million paying Excel users 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:32.240 out there, according to Max and Dena's calculations based on 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:37.640 Microsoft's public disclosures. Those users range from Excel social media 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:42.800 influencers to employees at the US Department of War Finance, guys, 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.440 college students, and people like Steve Balmer. 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:49.120 Most people think it's pretty weird. I keep a spreadsheet 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.040 of how I spend my hours. When we interviewed Steve Balmer, 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.839 he was like, oh yeah, I mean, like, I'm not 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.320 really an Excel guy. And then he showed us all these, 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:59.839 like all the insane ways that he was using it. 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.600 Steve Balmer headed Microsoft sales in the eighties and went 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:07.080 on to become the company's CEO. He now owns the 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:08.240 Los Angeles Clippers. 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:11.840 Okay, can you guys see that? Oh my god. 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:16.120 He showed Max and Dina the Excel spreadsheet he uses 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:17.760 to organize his life. 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.400 So this is kind of my spreadsheet. 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:24.680 Twenty five budget, twenty twenty five actual year to date? 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.680 How many nights in my way from home? What nights 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:32.000 were they? I've known Steve Balmer for more than two decades. 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:36.440 His entire brain is just a series of endless spreadsheets. 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:37.560 That's the way he thinks. 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.160 I of course asked him, like, where's the bathroom time go? 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:41.600 He's like, Oh, that's personal time. 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:45.960 Everything nine to five I keep track of and anything 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:51.960 clippers at night. Extreme as it may be, Balmer's spreadsheet 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.520 habit speaks to how Excel has morph from a computational 0:07:55.560 --> 0:08:00.160 tool to a ubiquitous part of people's everyday lives. But 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:06.200 how did the digital spreadsheet revolution start? Max says it 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:10.760 begins in the nineteen seventies, not with Microsoft or Excel, 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:13.760 but with a program called VisiCalc. 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.720 We spoke to the inventor of iCal, this guy named 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:20.600 Dan Bricklin, who dreamed it up while he was in 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.800 a business school class. There are things that look like spreadsheets, 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:27.760 you know, from ancient Mesopotamia. But like he was like, 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:29.680 wouldn't it be great if you could have one of 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:33.839 these tables with numbers where it just calculates instantly. And 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:39.880 he created, with a co founder, Bob Frankston, basically this 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.800 kind of rough hewn spreadsheet called Visical for the Apple too. 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:46.960 It really was I think the thing that started the 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:48.360 personal computing revolution. 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.240 At the time, computers were mostly used by universities or 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.560 large companies. They weren't in lots of people's homes or 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:59.840 in most people's desks at work. But big technology companies 0:08:59.880 --> 0:09:02.080 like Microsoft, we're hoping to change that. 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.840 Microsoft's like early motto was, you know, a computer on 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.840 every desk and in every home running Microsoft software. But 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.679 the problem is you have to convince people that they 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.120 want this. Why would anybody want their own one of 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:17.720 these things? 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.760 Microsoft realized that spreadsheet software could be part of that 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:27.240 pitch for selling more personal computers, so they decided to 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:31.840 take what VisiCalc pioneered and iterate on it. They started 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:35.760 working on a digital spreadsheet competitor. Was there a moment 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:39.640 when Microsoft kind of realized this could be a really 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:42.520 big deal for them as a company. 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:44.600 I mean, they knew from the jump. By the time 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:48.439 the Excel project started in eighty three, which was originally 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:51.720 called Project Odyssey, spreadsheets were a thing. Like everyone knew 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:55.280 that there were basically like two cool things you could 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:59.200 do with a computer. One was we're processing like desktop publishing, 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:03.040 and the other is spreadsheets. So Microsoft's like frantically like 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.720 trying to like make their own spreadsheet and they made 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.360 they made this original one which was like a VisiCalc 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:13.480 knockoff called Multiplan that did not work out, and then 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:17.199 they started working on another knockoff, which was a Lotus knockoff. 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:21.160 Lotus being like, at the time, the most successful spreadsheet program, 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.760 and they made this decision which I think in retrospect 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:28.960 it looks inspired to put it on the Mac. And 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:33.440 not only did that help like propel the Mac, it 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:39.439 also ends up propelling Microsoft because spreadsheets using this kind 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:42.440 of graphical interface, the point and click thing, it's just 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:46.880 like a way more elegant version of the experience, and 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:51.400 that then sort of propels Excel to become the dominant 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.360 spreadsheet platform. And then that gets juiced by like a 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:58.960 ton of sort of Microsoft, you know, hard nosed business behavior. 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.600 One of the key business strategies was selling subscriptions to 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:07.199 several of their software apps together as a package. That 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:09.960 package was called Microsoft Office. 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:12.240 I think if you're trying to understand, like how did 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:16.880 Microsoft sort of use Excel to propel itself to this dominance, Like, 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:20.600 in one word, it's bundling. As Microsoft evolved into the nineties, 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:23.760 they start making all these deals with big companies and 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:28.320 with computer manufacturers, so it becomes this like thing where 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:32.760 you can't really switch your spreadsheet without making a bunch 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:36.800 of other changes that could be potentially disruptive to your business. 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:39.800 The bundle got even bigger, sort of in the cloud era, 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:43.800 because ultimately Microsoft winds up doing this you know, cloud 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:48.240 license offering where if you're a corporation, every employee gets 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:51.480 everything in one thing. It ends up becoming its ends 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.160 up being called Microsoft three sixty five, and you can't 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:58.120 take those pieces apart. And look, I had a CIO 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.960 tell me while I was recaring a different story about 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:03.080 a year ago, that his CEO was trying to figure 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:04.800 out how they could save money on software, and came 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:07.079 over to him and said, look, you know, I personally 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:11.040 don't use Excel. Can you go to Microsoft and you 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:13.920 can save some money on my license. I don't need Excel, 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.240 don't pay them for Excel for me. And the CIO 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:18.679 just looked at a CEO like, you, sweet summer child, 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:19.440 that that is. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:19.840 Not a thing. 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.040 With the benefit of hindsight, how important was Excel in 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:26.920 turning Microsoft into the company that it is today. 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:31.160 I mean, I think there's no Microsoft, the four trillion 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:35.559 almost four trillion dollar you know, market cap company that 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:38.720 dominates the business software market without Excel. 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.920 In four decades, Excel has managed to conquer the corporate 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.520 world and seep into our culture, but it's no longer 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:52.720 the only game in town. The challenges to Excel's dominance 0:12:53.320 --> 0:13:03.760 that's coming up next. When Microsoft Excel was first released 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:06.520 in nineteen eighty five, it built on the work of 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:11.600 early digital spreadsheet programs like VisiCalc and Lotus, and pretty 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:16.560 much since then, Excel has been synonymous with spreadsheets, but 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:20.280 Bloomberg's Dina Bass says that hasn't stopped other companies from 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:24.760 trying to compete with it, like Google, which introduced Google 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:26.439 Sheets in two thousand and six. 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:29.600 Several people we spoke to, including you know, Ray Azi, 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:32.319 who after his time at Lotus actually ended up at 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.480 Microsoft working on their cloud strategy, you know, said to us, Look, 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:39.800 you know, people thought we thought sheets was going to 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:43.040 and just Google's office competitors in general were going to 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.080 be the thing that you know, took out Excel, but 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.320 it just never really happened. And look, I mean Google 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:54.040 does have a number of their office competitor is particularly 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:57.840 strong in schools. You know, most kids. When they go 0:13:57.880 --> 0:13:59.840 to school, they get a Chromebook and it comes with 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.600 the Google applications, and so you end up with a 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:05.400 generation and people that are growing up not using Office 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:08.920 but instead using the Google rivals. And so there has 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.200 been this question, I think for the last ten years 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:13.199 or so about what would happen when those folks hit 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:16.720 the workforce. But we're still really not seeing a mass 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:19.320 migration away from office. It seems like when you hit 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:21.880 the workforce, you get assigned your office license. 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:26.520 So far Excel has managed to fend off its free 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:31.520 cloud based competitor, but now it's also confronting another big 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:36.120 technological shift. I have to ask what about AI? What 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:38.960 kind of threat does AI post to Excel? 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.520 So if you think, like at the furthest remove, the 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.600 promise of AI is it's going to take a large 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.280 amount of data of information and allow you to ask 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:50.440 questions of it and get answers in an easy way. 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:52.760 And that's like what a spreadsheet does. And so there 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:56.560 are lots of potential Excel competitors. There are sort of 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.520 like AI versions of Excel. There are these kind of 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:03.280 like AI tools that are designed essentially to work with Excel, 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:07.760 but like part of The problem is that these AI 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.800 tools are really just either copycats of Excel, like they're 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:14.880 sort of just like doing exactly what Excel does, or 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:17.920 they're just little pieces that are designed to work with Excel. 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.200 So it's like an AI assistant that will spit out 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:24.400 a spreadsheet, but that spreadsheet ends up being an Excel file. 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:26.680 But then there's an other issue with AI, which is, 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:30.160 like AI is not great at math, like just the 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:32.760 like just like the most basic Excel function is like 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.160 some like add up a big long list of numbers, 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:39.680 and like large language models are not awesome at computation 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:43.200 because like they're going for approximation, not the not the 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:46.280 perfect answers. And then the other thing is AI models 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:50.240 are really bad at, like at telling you why they 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:52.600 arrived at a given answer, and that is the thing 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:54.240 that spreadsheets are awesome at. 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:57.960 And Dina says that even some of the AI products 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:02.080 that are aiming to replace Excel still rely on spreadsheets 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:03.320 to manage their data. 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.000 What people are trying to do is not reinvent the 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:11.920 underlying spreadsheet layer. It's you know, basically create a copilot 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:15.280 or an assistant that works on top of the data 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:17.920 in the spreadsheet and answers questions for you. Now, Microsoft, 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:20.160 of course is trying to do the same thing with 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:21.119 their Copilot. 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:24.720 And so even if you're using an AI algorithm to 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.120 generate a spreadsheet, my guess is it's going to spit 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:28.680 it out and you're going to be right back and 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.120 Microsoft Excel just like your parents and maybe even your 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:32.960 grandparents were. 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.240 Max says, there might be something deeper at play here, 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:40.760 something intangible that's kept people coming back to Excel year 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:41.400 after year. 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:44.480 Maybe there is something fundamental to a spreadsheet that like 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:49.400 we wouldn't actually want to process data in another way 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:51.840 that like, really, this is just like a table of numbers. 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:54.000 Like I said, people have been using tables and numbers 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:54.960 for a very long time. 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:56.760 Yeah, if it was good enough for mesopotagics. 0:16:57.040 --> 0:16:59.520 Yeah, it's like it's how Steve Bomber's brain works. Maybe 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.720 it's how all of our brains work in some sense. 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:06.239 And like the prospect of trying to reinvent that it 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:08.680 doesn't make that much sense, which is why, like Dina said, 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:12.680 like Microsoft strategy is not to make an AI version 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:15.840 of Excel. It's just have like an assistant inside of 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:18.520 Excel that and this is you know, barring the language 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:20.760 that Microsoft executives use when they talk about it, but 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.320 it's basically like, they want to make you as good 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:27.080 as the world champion three two. 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.640 One, and we dine Wow. 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:34.360 So you watch those world champions on TV. You're really impressed, 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:38.440 You're thrilled. A huge congratulations to our twenty twenty five 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:43.600 Microsoft Excel World Champion Deer mid Early and now you, 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:46.200 with the help of co pilot, can do the same 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:48.680 kinds of advanced modeling that they do. I don't think 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.000 it's quite there yet, but that's the that's the promise. 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.280 This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.200 To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:08.119 to all of bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:12.159 dot com slash Podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:12.800 back tomorrow.