The Algorithmic Bazaar

by Thomas Wieberneit | Feb 13, 2026 | Blog |

The digital commerce industry has spent the last twenty-five or so years optimizing a single, unit of measurement: the session. We built cathedrals of conversion rate optimization (CRO), obsessed over pixel-perfect hero images, and deployed armies of “customer success” bots that were little more than glorified FAQ routers. We tracked users from the moment they landed on the homepage, watched them struggle through navigational hierarchies, and celebrated when 3% of them actually bought something. Anywhere else, a 97% failure rate would be grounds for executive termination. In e-commerce, it was the benchmark for success. We can safely say that the era of the session comes to an end, thanks to conversational and then agentic commerce, which put the “homepage” on life support. What comes more and more into the foreground is the intent, whichis what the session was supposed to help derive. And crucially, the entity expressing that intent is increasingly likely to be a machine, not a human. What we are seeing now is the transition from browser-based commerce, where humans operate interfaces, to agentic Commerce, where AI agents operate APIs. This isn’t just a channel expansion like conversational commerce; it is a fundamental inversion of the retail power dynamic. In the browser era, the retailer controlled the environment. In the agentic era, the customer (or their proxy) controls the context. This is quite similar to what happened in the 2000s with the advent of social media. And it will likely be countered by vendors as fast as the power shift back then, e.g., using GEO instead of SEO. The demise of the search box Since the rise of Google, the...

Microsoft Layoffs: Profits, CEOs, and a Culture of Fear?

by Thomas Wieberneit | Aug 1, 2025 | Blog |

This will be a rant, but a rant with roots in the belief that employee experience fosters customer experience. As it should be well-known by now, Microsoft fired around 9,000 employees in July, after doing some smaller layoff rounds already in 2025, totaling more than 15,000 employees according to the TechCrunch comprehensive list of 2025 tech layoffs. This continues a trend from 2023 and 2024. Now, I get it. Companies need to be and stay profitable, reorganize and, if needed, lay off employees. As such, there is nothing wrong with this. Where things start to get wrong is when at the same time two other things can be observed: strong and successful growth in revenues as well as profits, and very generous payments to the C-suite. Microsoft is immensely successful. For a long time now, we see record revenue and profits every quarter, which means strong growth. Looking at the most recent Q4/25 numbers, this is poised to continue and made Microsoft the second $4 trillion company after Nvidia.   Consequently, Satya Nadella as the company CEO, receives an enormous total compensation ($ 79.1M in 2024). To compare this number, the average total compensation of a Microsoft employee is $220k with a median compensation of around $192k. This is a factor of 400. And no, this is not me being jealous. Microsoft’s written down corporate values are respect, integrity, and accountability. What triggered this text is the dissonance between all this that is also evident in Satya Nadella’s mail to the employees titled “Recommitting to our why, what, and how” that got published on the corporate blog on July...

SaaS or the Rise of the Undead

by Thomas Wieberneit | Jan 7, 2025 | Blog |

SaaS is dead! It will be replaced by agentic systems that replace coded business logic by AI agents that autonomously interact to bring said business logic to life, just smarter. Satya Nadella said it – or at least something in these lines, if I believe all the pundits around. His words lit up the Internet. And Satya Nadella being the CEO of a 3 trillion dollar company is the ultimate fount of truth and wisdom, when it comes to business applications. Is he not? So, what should we take from his statements? After all, the words of the CEO of one of the top 3 valuable companies on this Earth carry some weight. Let me start straight. I call BS! SaaS, first of all, is a delivery model of logic that also had some implications on vendors‘ business models and their approaches to pricing. For a variety of good and not so good reasons this delivery model succeeded vs. the prevalent model of on-premises software. Some of the more important reasons have been “no lock in by vendors”, “only pay for what you use”, “reduction of own infrastructure cost”. Of course, there are more. All of them being true – or not so much. One thing is for sure, SaaS led to a considerable centralization of compute resources. Hyperscalers emerged. Vendors took over the management of the application stack for their clients. It is very hard to envision that this gets reverted any time soon, even in a world with increasing trust issues and a good argument for edge computing. What SaaS is not, or only marginally, is a way...

The Generative AI Game of Thrones – Is OpenAI toast?

by Thomas Wieberneit | Nov 20, 2023 | Analysis, Blog |

The News This has been an exciting weekend for the generative AI industry. On Friday November 17, OpenAI announced that the company fired its figurehead CEO Sam Altmann and appointed Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati as interims CEO in a surprise move. The press release states that Altmann “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.” Surprised was apparently not only Sam Altmann, but also the till then chairman of the board Greg Brockman who first stepped down from this position and subsequently quit OpenAI. Investors, notably Microsoft, found themselves blindsided, too – or flat footed depending on the individual point of view. Satya Nadella was compelled to state that Microsoft stays committed to the partnership with OpenAI in a blog post that got updated on November 19, 11:55 pm. All hell broke loose. Microsoft shares took a significant hit. A number of additional senior OpenAI personnel quit. Both, Altman and Brockman, voiced the idea of founding another startup together. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella flew to San Francisco to negotiate a reinstatement of Altmann. It initially seemed that this would be going to happen, along with the complete board stepping down and being replaced by Silicon Valley tech executives. Apparently, this did not work out. The result is that Altmann, Brockman, and some other former senior OpenAI staff are now Microsoft employees, with Altmann becoming the CEO of a new advanced AI research unit. Also on Sunday, Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch, was appointed new interims CEO at OpenAI. Meanwhile, more than 500 of OpenAI’s employees, including former interims CEO Murati threatened to quit OpenAI and join Altmann at Microsoft, which apparently...

The State of Customer Experience: A Small Business Perspective

by Thomas Wieberneit | Apr 25, 2023 | Blog, Sponsored |

The following article is an excerpt of a White Paper by Customerization’s Kira Tchernikovsky. Kira is the co-founder and CMO of this Canadian consulting company that focuses on helping SMBs stand out through superior business automation. You can download the full white paper here. Customer experience (CX) is how a customer feels about a company over time. Creating great CX is about positive emotions, building trust, and leaving a lasting impression with customers. Orchestrating excellent customer experience is essential for building brand loyalty and increasing customer retention. It’s also becoming increasingly important as more and more clients. B2C and B2B, choose to do business with companies who personalize interactions and prioritize customer satisfaction. While larger businesses have the resources to invest in Customer Experience (CX), small businesses (and by small we mean <200 employees) face unique challenges in providing an outstanding CX.   Here are a few common challenges for small businesses: Limited resources: Small businesses have limited financial resources and less employees to dedicate to a comprehensive customer experience solution. This makes it difficult to compete with larger businesses that have more resources to invest in customer experience initiatives. Lack of expertise: Small businesses may not have in-house expertise in areas such as customer experience design, research, and analytics. Therefore, it is not easy for SMEs to develop and implement an effective customer experience strategy. Limited data and insights: Small businesses may have limited access to customer data and insights, which in its turn, prevents them from objectively understanding customer needs, preferences, and pain points. How can they then build effective customer interactions and experiences? Limited technology resources: Small...