Microsoft is bringing popular programming language Python to Excel. A public preview of the feature is available today, allowing Excel users to manipulate and analyze data from Python.
You won’t need to install any additional software or set up an add-on to access the functionality, as Python integration in Excel will be part of Excel’s built-in connectors and Power Query. Microsoft is also adding a new PY function that allows Python data to be exposed within the grid of an Excel spreadsheet. Through a partnership with Anaconda, an enterprise Python repository, popular Python libraries like pandas, statsmodels, and Matplotlib will be available in Excel.
I truly wonder why. I mean, others just package a python installation, but Microsoft wants to use the cloud. Very peculiar.
Running in the cloud is another reason to keep paying them every month in perpetuity, rather than just once. Helps keep revenues stable and indefinite.
It also allows them to completely gate the feature via tiers, like they do with other things in their environment. I’ve written about Power Platform since it is a pretty accessible tool for a lot of people. But it is also a shining example of Microsoft’s almost microtransaction-like enterprise vision of the future. Everything is great in the preview. While they collect usage data. Then they tuck the most useful and common functionality behind various paywalls, including per usage paywalls. They leave just enough in the base tier to draw people in and get them committed to the platform.
It will not surprise me in the least if basic features are removed and paywalled after the preview. It would not surprise me in the least if they repeat what they’ve already done and prevent users from using built-in python functions unless the user pays up.
But they can’t stop me from importing CSV data that I make with regular python. MS loves legacy features almost as much as they love money, that’s why windows 11 still has the fucking control panel.
Exactly why I hope it will flop and they decide it’s not worth the money. It’s disgusting how tech companies take something free and try to monetize it by hiding it under a veneer of “accessibility” and “integration”. One can only hope that information regarding FOSS will remain easily accessible and that the group this update is targeting is insignificant enough. I doubt any serious data scientist would opt to Excel + Python over just Python for big enough data sets, and the average Excel user, let’s face it, is unlikely to learn Python.
Probably to keep it proprietary. If they distributed Python with scientific packages it would be hackable, and they’d lose control.