[vladvasiliu]

I think GP meant MS might prefer people not install Office and use the online version instead. I don't know if there's a difference in pricing and if it's possible to only get the online or the offline version.

Using the online versions allows them to have everybody at the same level all the time, which might mean easier support.

I for one prefer the online versions. They work fairly well in Firefox on Linux. Outlook online is way nicer to use than the installed one. Much, much snappier...

[toyg]

> easier support

This is what I meant. It’s very clear that Microsoft sees the future as cloud-first, and their traditional installers are still there only for defensive purposes. I bet they’d love to drop them, if they could be 100% sure that this wouldn’t mean losing customers (the ones with old browsers, unwilling to retrain, unwilling to use Sharepoint rather than network folders, etc) and that it wouldn’t weaken their entrenchment (those billions of offline .docx and .xslx are a massive moat that is very hard to abandon for good).

[athms]

Unless you have an Enterprise license, Office 365 pushes updates for both on-prem and cloud at the same time and you cannot opt-out. On-prem uses the CTR installer, not MSI, which includes DRM that must be activated online and phones home every thirty days. If you are offline for more than a month, the on-prem apps will go into restricted mode allowing viewing documents only.