[ihuman]

Microsoft is a software company, and Office is one of their biggest products. Why would they make it free? While they do give out OneNote for free, it is not a major part of Office. Making Word, excel, and PowerPoint free would hurt them much more than it would help them.

[smacktoward]

The same reason a friendly drug dealer would offer a first hit free: to get you hooked.

Once you have a bunch of important documents locked up in Office file formats -- which Office is the only app guaranteed to be able to read reliably -- you have a great incentive down the road to start sending money to Microsoft so you can continue to access them.

[pionar]

I believe that's what they're doing, with the "free to view, pay to edit" model.

[niels_olson]

maybe it should be free to edit, pay to share?

[chrisBob]

It is because people like me are in the process of switching over to iWork because my on the go platform is an iPad. I am still in the middle of the transition, and this will make me reconsider.