Ripping you off Stage 3
Word, Excel and Outlook remain the default formats of work, which makes leaving costly. In 2025 Microsoft raised consumer prices by $3 a month to bundle Copilot, its first increase in 12 years, and set the Copilot app to install automatically alongside Office. Two extraction criteria. Stage 3.
- Since
- 2011
- Category
- Productivity
- VC-backed
- No
- Public
- Since 1986 (NASDAQ: MSFT)
- Website
- microsoft.com
Why it’s rated 3
The criteria it meets, with sources · Method
- Alignment 0 of 3
- None
- Lock-in 1 of 4
-
- L3 Hardware or workflow
- Extraction 2 of 7
-
- E1 Pay more for the same Jan 16, 2025
- E7 Worse defaults Sep 16, 2025
- Decline 0 of 3
- None
Result Two or more extraction criteria, or lock-in plus at least one, so stage 3.
News signals
Sourced reporting, tagged by strategy
Sep 16, 2025
Jan 17, 2025
Microsoft follows Google with a price rise and AI bundled into 365 plans
Dark patternsSubscription bundling
Jan 16, 2025