After firing 15,000 employees, this tech giant shuts its office library and cuts newspaper access

After cutting around 15,000 jobs last year, the tech giant is now making another quiet but telling change: many office employees no longer have access to internal library resources or paid news publications.

For a company that once encouraged curiosity, reading, and long hours buried in reports and books, the shift has raised eyebrows inside and outside Redmond.According to reports, Microsoft began pulling the plug on several long-standing subscriptions late last year. Publishers were informed, through automated emails that their contracts would not be renewed once they expired. No dramatic announcement. No town hall.

Just a clean break.

One of the biggest casualties of this move is Strategic News Service (SNS), a publication that had been supplying in-depth global tech and business reports to Microsoft employees for more than 20 years. In a note sent to users, SNS said Microsoft had decided to switch off all library-linked contracts, including its flagship global report that thousands of employees relied on.The changes go beyond just one publisher. Employees have reportedly lost digital access to premium business news platforms like The Information.

Even borrowing business and tech books, once a simple perk through the Microsoft Library, is no longer an option. The physical library itself has been shut down.Internally, Microsoft says this is all part of a bigger plan. An internal FAQ describes the cuts as a move towards a “modern, AI-powered learning experience” through something called the Skilling Hub. In simple terms, the company wants employees to learn through AI-curated tools instead of traditional reading spaces and subscriptions.

The FAQ does admit the decision hasn’t been easy, acknowledging that the library was a space many employees genuinely valued.This change fits into a larger transformation being driven from the top. CEO Satya Nadella has been clear about Microsoft’s direction: artificial intelligence is no longer an add-on, it’s the core. Reports suggest senior leaders have been told, in no uncertain terms, to align with this vision or reconsider their future at the company.There’s also a sense of nostalgia attached to what’s been lost. The old Microsoft library, once housed in Building 4 on the Redmond campus, was part of company folklore. Veteran Windows developer Raymond Chen once wrote about how the sheer weight of books was rumoured to have caused structural issues in the building itself, an oddly fitting metaphor for an era that has now been packed away.

What happens next is still unclear. Microsoft hasn’t said which, if any, digital news subscriptions might survive this transition. For now, employees are adjusting to a workplace where AI tools replace reading rooms, and algorithms step in where newspapers and books once lived.For a company betting its future on artificial intelligence, the message seems clear: learn faster, learn differently, and maybe stop flipping pages while you’re at it.