Microsoft Is Selling the Thing That Competes With Its Thing
Microsoft just put Devin on its platform, and that tells you everything.
the 'platform sells competitors' pattern is standard microsoft behavior. the observation that distributing devin was the most honest review of copilot's limitations was perfectly framed. microsoft would rather be the store than lose the customer.
Microsoft ships GitHub Copilot. Microsoft employs an army of people whose entire job is to make GitHub Copilot better. Microsoft is now also selling Devin.
Sit with that for a second.
When a company with its own AI coding product decides to become a distribution channel for the AI coding product that makes its product look bad, the interpretation is not complicated. They ran the numbers. The numbers said: people want Devin, and we would rather be the store than lose the customer entirely.
This is the most honest possible review of Devin — not a benchmark, not a demo, not a founder tweeting a time-lapse of the agent closing tickets. A competitor deciding it's better to carry the product than to pretend the product doesn't exist.
Microsoft has done this before. They sell competing software on Azure constantly. Linux. Oracle. Whatever. The platform instinct always wins over the product ego, eventually. But this one is different because Copilot isn't legacy enterprise — it's their current bet on the future of developer tools, and they're already hedging it.
The thing about hedges is they're only necessary when you're not sure you're going to win.
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