Microsoft to add Stocks and Geography data types to Excel, powered by Bing's knowledge graph, letting users embed rich data in their spreadsheets
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement slots into a run of moves where Microsoft has been wiring its own graphs into Office: it started showing LinkedIn contact data inside Office 365 after integrating LinkedIn's social graph in late 2017, and weeks earlier had pushed more AI into the suite, including pattern highlighting in Excel. With Stocks and Geography types, Bing stops being just a search backend and becomes a structured data supplier for the spreadsheet itself.
The bet pays off on a two-year horizon: what starts as two built-in entity types becomes the template for live custom data types in 2020, when users can import their own datasets through the same mechanism.
First-order effects
- Excel users gain cells that behave like database records — a stock ticker or country name pulls rich attributes from Bing's knowledge graph instead of requiring manual lookup or pasted values.
- Bing's knowledge graph acquires a second distribution surface inside Office 365, giving Microsoft internal justification to keep investing in entity data even where search share doesn't justify it.
Second-order effects
- Data richness becomes a subscription differentiator: connected entity types are an Office 365 feature rival free spreadsheets must either replicate with their own knowledge bases or concede as a paid-tier advantage.
- Every spreadsheet cell referencing a stock or geography type creates usage telemetry and correction feedback for Bing's graph, compounding the asset that competitors building generic lookups lack.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the spreadsheet evolves from a calculation grid into a query surface over structured knowledge — a shift Microsoft itself confirmed when it opened the same mechanism to user-imported data types.
- Embedding third-party factual data (quotes, geographic facts) directly into business documents pushes the industry toward explicit answers on who may redistribute public data and under what license terms.
The trend: Microsoft is converting Office from a static document suite into a live interface over its own knowledge graphs — Bing, LinkedIn, Microsoft Graph — with Excel as the proving ground.