Microsoft may bring back the infamous ‘Clippy’ companion
Remember Clippy?
Before the likes of Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, there was Clippy, Microsoft’s animated tech assistance paperclip. The anthropomorphic office tool often popped up when one was navigating MS Excel, MS Word, and other then-fresh features of the operating system of the early 2000s.
Introduced in Office 97 and designed by illustrator Kevan J. Atteberry, the feature was discontinued in 2007 to make way for a more modern design path.
In a recent Tweet, Microsoft has promised to bring back Clippy to replace their current paperclip emoji if their said tweet gets 20,000 likes. In less than 24 hours, it's raised the limit to over 129k likes as of writing.
“If this gets 20k likes, we’ll replace the paperclip emoji in Microsoft 365 with Clippy,” Microsoft shared.
If this gets 20k likes, we’ll replace the paperclip emoji in Microsoft 365 with Clippy. pic.twitter.com/6T8ziboguC
— Microsoft (@Microsoft) July 14, 2021
The mention of Clippy has since spawned numerous memories of the animations that Microsoft has since left behind, along with a few other nostalgic characters like Merlin the Microsoft Agent character and more.
I want Merlin back. pic.twitter.com/PPmC2VKMa4
— Buffy's Blog (@BuffyBlogs) July 14, 2021
???♂️???
— Emoji Information ℹ️ (@Informoji) July 14, 2021
??????
… pic.twitter.com/gBdW6HAvAa
This unlocked the deepest part of our memory ?
— OREO Cookie (@Oreo) July 14, 2021
I miss him so much
— Lvck Menescal (@Luck_Menescal) July 15, 2021
I might go crazy pic.twitter.com/gexkVKwACs
When asked if Clippy will really make a comeback, Microsoft teased that we’ll just have to “wait and find out.”
Wait and find out.
— Microsoft (@Microsoft) July 14, 2021
Photo from imgflip.com and Microsoft's Twitter account