Comment by SpaceNugget

I'm amazed that so many people here completely miss the point. Clippy being annoying/horrible UX or not has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of the reasoning for it being compared to modern software trends.

The point is that microsoft got _nothing_ regardless if you were using or not using clippy. So clippy being bad could only be because they sucked at making something good for their users. It was not because they chose maliciously to make the user experience bad for an ulterior motive like collecting and selling user data or pumping up telemetry numbers for a promotion. They genuinely thought clippy would be a net benefit to their users in some way even though they were clearly wrong.

The point Louis is trying to highlight is the difference in intent, not in execution so that is why clippy is being used as the moral backdrop to compare modern software against. Saying clippy itself is "user hostile UX" is besides the point, and either shows a lack of comprehension or intentional feigned ignorance so that you can complain about a badly thought out feature you didn't like that hasn't existed for over 20 years.