I’ve been hearing from Microsoft employees for weeks that something strange is happening with the Microsoft Library. It has long served as a valuable resource for business books, newspaper subscriptions, journals, and reports. Now, Microsoft is in the middle of transforming both the physical library space and the subscriptions that employees rely on.
Also this week: A British police force blames Copilot for its intelligence mistake, PC shipments are up amid RAM shortages, and Microsoft might have just leaked its Forza Horizon 6 release date. |
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Microsoft is closing its employee library and cutting back on subscriptions |
Microsoft’s library of books is so heavy that it once caused a campus building to sink, according to an unproven legend among employees. Now those physical books, journals, and reports, and many of Microsoft’s digital subscriptions to leading US newspapers, are disappearing in a shift described inside Microsoft as an “AI-powered learning experience.”
Microsoft started cutting back on its employee subscriptions to news and reports services in November, with some publishers receiving an automated email cancellation of a contract. “This correspondence serves as official notification that Microsoft will not renew any existing contracts upon their respective expiration dates,” reads an email from Microsoft’s vendor management team. “We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere appreciation for your partnership, collaboration, and continued support throughout our engagement.”
Strategic News Service (SNS), which has provided global reports to Microsoft’s roughly 220,000 employees and executives for more than 20 years, is no longer part of Microsoft’s subscription list. In an email to Microsoft employees that relied on SNS reports, the publisher notes that “Microsoft has just released an automated announcement that all library contracts, of which the SNS Global Report is perhaps the most strategic for your own use, are to be turned off.” Microsoft employees I’ve spoken to recently have lost access to digital publications like The Information. They’re also unable to perform digital checkouts of business books from the Microsoft Library. While Microsoft often rotates the publishers it uses in its Library service, this time it’s part of a much broader change that seems like corporate cost cutting mixed with the continued push for AI.
In an internal FAQ about the changes, Microsoft notes that subscriptions aren’t being renewed as “part of Microsoft’s shift to a more modern, AI-powered learning experience through the Skilling Hub.” This means the physical library space is changing, too. “The Library closed as part of Microsoft’s move toward a more modern, connected learning experience through the Skilling Hub,” notes the FAQ. “We know this change affects a space many people valued.”
It’s not clear what Microsoft intends to do with the old library space in Building 92, though this wasn’t its original home. The library was previously part of a now-demolished area of Microsoft’s Redmond campus, on the second floor of Building 4. Its location, above the ground floor cafeteria, is what created that legend about the heavy books damaging that building. “The weight of the books took their toll on Building 4,” said veteran Windows developer Raymond Chen in a 2020 blog entry. “Some people say that the building was sinking. Maybe. But everyone agreed that the pillars in the underground parking were starting to crack.”
Microsoft is now in the middle of transitioning from its library to whatever this “AI-powered learning experience” is. I understand the company will maintain some digital subscriptions, but it’s not yet clear which ones will remain after this transition period is complete. I reached out to The Financial Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal to comment on Microsoft’s changes, but I didn’t get any responses in time for publication.
Most publishers won’t be keen to discuss losing corporate contracts or subscriptions, but SNS didn’t hold back on its thoughts about Microsoft’s AI-powered learning future. “Technology’s future is shaped by flows of power, money, innovation, and people — none of which are predictable based on LLMs' probabilistic regurgitation of old information,” says Berit Anderson, chief operating officer of Strategic News Service. “We look forward to welcoming Microsoft back into the SNS community whenever they decide they would like to return.”
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UK police blame Microsoft Copilot for intelligence mistake. One of Britain’s largest police forces has admitted that it made a mistake in an intelligence report after using Copilot to search for information. The report, which led to Israeli football (soccer) fans being banned from a match last year, included a nonexistent match between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv. The West Midlands Police initially blamed the mistake on “social media scraping” or a Google search result, before admitting AI had been used in the report. It’s not clear what version of Copilot the West Midlands Police were using, but it’s alarming to see a police force rely on AI alone for its intelligence reports instead of fact-checking the output. Microsoft says it hasn’t been able to replicate what is being reported and makes it clear people should review the sources that Copilot uses.
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Microsoft scrambles to quell fury around its new AI data centers. Microsoft announced a five-point plan this week that it calls “Community-First AI Infrastructure.” It includes paying more to try and prevent data center energy demands from raising people’s electricity bills, minimizing water use, training workers and creating jobs, and contributing to local taxes near its data centers. Microsoft’s plan is a response to a surge of opposition against data center projects, where some communities have pushed developers to cancel or delay projects.
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PC shipments just grew unexpectedly amid RAM shortages. Last week I outlined why 2026 is going to be a volatile year for the PC market, but 2025 ended well for PC makers. IDC reports that PC shipments grew 10 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2025. While the end of Windows 10 support will have helped push that number up, IDC notes that PC makers have also been aggressively pulling forward inventory to combat potential tariffs and the global memory shortage. Consumers and businesses are now bracing for more price rises, especially in the second part of 2026 once RAM stockpiles start running low.
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Microsoft is retiring its Office Lens app on iOS and Android. Microsoft first launched its Lens scanner app on iOS and Android in 2015, with the ability to take a photo of a document or a whiteboard and have it properly cropped and converted into a Word or PDF document. It’s now being retired because the same functionality is included in the OneDrive app. The Lens scanner app won’t be functional after March 9th, so you’ll either have to use OneDrive or find another solution to any document scanning needs.
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Trump’s fundraisers asked Microsoft for its White House ballroom donation. The Trump administration approached Microsoft for its donation to fund the White House’s $300 million ballroom, according to documents released this week. Microsoft attended a dinner held for supporters of the ballroom project and confirmed it donated to the Trust for the National Mall in September. “Microsoft understands that these funds (along with contributions from other donors) will be used to support the construction of the ballroom,” says Microsoft counsel Karen Christian.
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Microsoft is making it much easier to add hyperlinks in Word docs. Microsoft is making it a lot faster and easier to add links to text inside Word documents. Instead of having to open a menu item to insert a link or use the CTRL + K keyboard shortcut, you can now simply paste a link on top of the text you want to hyperlink. This matches what’s commonly found in modern content management systems and text editors, and it’s rolling out to Word on the web, Windows, and Mac.
- Microsoft’s shutting down Word’s built-in Send to Kindle feature. In early February, Microsoft will discontinue support for a button inside Microsoft Word that lets users send documents to devices like the Kindle Scribe. You’ll still be able to send Word documents to your Kindle, but you’ll need to use Amazon’s official tool instead.
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Microsoft might have just leaked Forza Horizon 6’s release date. Microsoft is preparing to show the first gameplay of Forza Horizon 6 next week, and it looks like we’ll also get a release date for the game. An X poster claims to have seen a pop-up inside Forza Horizon 5 that promotes preorder information for Forza Horizon 6. I haven’t been able to reproduce the pop-up, and I haven’t seen additional reports of others seeing it, but it mentions a May 19th release date. That aligns with sources telling me that Forza Horizon 6 is due in the month of May. I wouldn’t expect to see Playground Games’ other title, Fable, until later this year, though.
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Microsoft will put buy buttons directly in Copilot. Microsoft is letting Copilot users make purchases directly inside the AI chatbot. If you start asking for suggestions about clothing or sneakers, Copilot can surface a checkout option to let you purchase items inside the app. OpenAI launched a similar checkout feature inside ChatGPT recently, and Microsoft is working with retailers like Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Ashley Furniture, and some Etsy sellers.
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Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are paying up for “enterprise” access to Wikipedia. Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral AI have joined Google in paying the Wikimedia Foundation for access to Wikipedia’s collection of articles. The partnership includes API access that is “tuned” for commercial use and AI companies. This type of access will allow Microsoft to improve its Copilot responses, and the Wikimedia Foundation will also build features for its enterprise customers and “try to structure the data in ways that support what these companies’ needs are.”
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