It might not get the same kind of attention as Google and Apple, but Microsoft is still one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies operating today. It runs Azure, one of the biggest cloud computing services, and maintains Windows 11 and the whole Office suite of software. It also makes plenty of Surface hardware and has a whole slew of gaming products, including the Xbox Series X. But the company is ever expanding — building new hardware, acquiring new game studios, and making sure that even if Microsoft doesn’t run your phone, it can touch plenty of the apps on it.
Over the last few years, Microsoft has been bringing its big exclusive franchises to rival platforms like PlayStation and Switch. Satya Nadella even said he wanted to “get rid of” console exclusives — that might not be a great move. But the new Xbox boss seems open to the idea that the console’s identity hinges on exclusives.
Windows MIDI Services is ready for primetime and brings support for MIDI 2.0 and improvements to MIDI 1.0 to Microsoft machines. This includes support for higher resolution expression, loopback, and bidirectional communication with MIDI 2.0 hardware. Now with the major OS providers onboard, maybe adoption of MIDI 2.0 will pick up steam.
[Windows Experience Blog]
Like Phil Spencer, Bond had a note for the employees at Xbox as she announced her departure, which she shared on LinkedIn Friday evening.
Bond:
I’ve decided this is the right time for me to take my next step, both personally and professionally. We’re living through a transformative technological era that will shape the next generation of our industry, and I’m energized by what’s ahead. This moment also presents a unique opportunity for fresh eyes and new leadership to guide the team into its next chapter.
The big shakeup at Xbox means that Asha Sharma is taking over for Phil Spencer as CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Her previous role at Microsoft was AI-focused, and here’s what she has to say about utilizing AI for games:
As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.
The Extended Support Release for Firefox version 115, the last version available on Windows 7 and 8, will no longer receive security updates after this month, Neowin reports. The loss of support comes three years after Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 and 8 in 2023.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman seems to think AI will be ready to replace most white-collar work within two years — presumably not including his own, of course. He also claimed more of Microsoft’s own AI models are due this year.
“White-collar work, where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”
Across the industry, workers describe a ‘fear-based culture’ and pressure to ‘fall in line.‘
The issue appears to be mostly affecting users on the West Coast, but certain services that rely on Azure, including the Microsoft Store, are experiencing outages and slowdowns after a data center suffered a partial power loss. Microsoft’s Azure Status Page is updating regularly:
Starting at 08:00 UTC on 07 February 2026, a subset of customers using Azure services in the West US region may experience intermittent service unavailability or delays in monitoring and log data for some resources hosted in the affected datacenter areas. Impacted customers may observe degraded performance or delayed telemetry as services continue to recover.
The so-called Epstein files appear to show how Steven Sinofsky negotiated a $14 million payout from Microsoft.
The leaders of US businesses are more scared than he thought:
I was at a conference where they said, how many of you are afraid to speak out? And only like four people raised their hands and I said, wow, this is even worse than I thought. People are afraid to speak out about being afraid to speak out. I mean, because everybody in the room should have raised their hand. Are you kidding?
[Financial Times]
Microsoft has confirmed that the boot failures with its January 2026 Windows 11 update are limited to “commercial” PCs and happened due to the December 2025 update failing to install and PCs being left in an “improper state.” It’s now investigating why PCs managed to get into this state in the first place. Microsoft’s first Windows 11 update of 2026 has been a mess.
The data centers will be built on land that used to be owned by Foxconn.
