I'm curious in what way microsoft would not be interested in having users not install office. I thought that office was microsofts primary revenue source (maybe this is info from before cloud stuff though).
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...
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).
So for an Office365 bundle with x products, you pay the same price whether you use all x products or fewer. The fewer you use, the better for Microsoft and they don't take a hit on revenue.
As with most Microsoft licensing & naming things it is surprisingly complex!
And weird. Like they don't want your money weird.
We have Office 365 for small businesses (or whatever it is called these days). A co-worker needed Visio for something. Nope. Visio is for businesses with Office 365 Enterprise subscription only.
Long story short, ended up with him having to buy a personal copy with the company credit card.