COM doesn't work on the Web. They prefer to burn away the power features (like S/MIME in Outlook!) and release a strictly inferior, slower product, for the sake of...
... honestly I don't know what. It makes zero sense - it's pissing off corporate users, who are already captive. I'm guessing hidden inflation strikes again - they can't afford maintaining two versions, so they prefer to go with the worse one.
That's the thing though: full-featured desktop software is already good enough at keeping people to their monthly subs, especially in enterprise contexts where there's no option for pirating it. Dragging the desktop versions down to the lowest common denominator of the web does not help drive more subscriptions; it's a miracle of vendor lock-in that it doesn't cause mass cancellations of existing ones.
Pretty much. Satya's Microsoft has pivoted to a "cloud and services company", meaning that they're in a shortage of fucks to give about desktop operating systems and applications.
COM is not going anywhere, all new APIs since Vista are COM based (or its cousin WinRT), with some exceptions like userspace drivers (the COM based version 1.0 apparently wasn't well received).
... honestly I don't know what. It makes zero sense - it's pissing off corporate users, who are already captive. I'm guessing hidden inflation strikes again - they can't afford maintaining two versions, so they prefer to go with the worse one.