Microsoft news recap: partners on Google Maps competitor, crypto mining banned on Microsoft’s online services, and more

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Microsoft news recap is a weekly feature highlighting the top Microsoft news stories of the past week. Sit back, grab some coffee, and enjoy the read!

Microsoft partners with Amazon, Meta and The Linux Foundation on Google Maps competitor

Microsoft, Meta, Amazon Web Services, TomTom, and The Linux Foundation, are partnering to create an alternative to Google Maps and Apple Maps. The companies are to form the Overture Maps Foundation, aiming to create new apps based on open-source mapping solutions.

Google maps on a phone in hand

Microsoft bans crypto mining from its online services

As of December 1, Microsoft has restricted crypto mining on its online services, including Azure. Explaining the move, Microsoft says it’s to enhance the security of customers’ accounts.

Microsoft Logo On Building

Microsoft promises more gaming news soon after disappointing Games Awards presence

At the Game Awards 2022, big players in the gaming industry received awards and announced new games, but to the surprise of some, Microsoft wasn’t at the forefront of this. Now, the company has promised that there will be more gaming news coming soon.

Microsoft promises more gaming news soon after disappointing Games Awards presence - OnMSFT.com - December 12, 2022

GitHub releases AI powered Copilot for Business at $19/mo

GitHub’s AI-powered Copilot for Business has launched, for a price of $19/m per user. Copilot is described as being an AI pair programmer, with GitHub saying “Trained on billions of lines of code, GitHub Copilot turns natural language prompts into coding suggestions across dozens of languages.”

GitHub Copilot logo and background

That’s it for this week. We will be back next week with more Microsoft news.