This might make sense for services like aws but not user software..
When it's someone else's dollar... most people don't sweat it too hard.
To be clear though, this isn't wrong. The number of times I've gotten into shouting matches with people over deallocating cloud resources is not insignificant.
Azure and AWS already can bill by the second.
As of right now, the cloud versions don't have all of the features of the desktop versions.
But, cloud Office is absolutely abysmal if you get away from the core line features or need to do anything semi-difficult.
Online Word fails to faithfully reproduce complex layouts. Dealing with asian languages results in weird font inconsistencies as well as layout errors.
Online Excel also fails in non-ASCII text. Complex Excel books that are already slow are even slower online. Of course, you can't access local resources if any book reaches outwards like that.
I wouldn't be too surprised if it still all moves to subscription pricing though.
The deliverable is a single docker container (not a desktop app!) and right from the start, nearly three years now, we've been selling on the AWS Marketplace for 0.16c/hr:
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-5jvke6codhrsm
We have a couple of pricing models, but on the consumption based model we stick to that clear, transparent hourly price. It's good for customers that choose that model, and good for us because we're engineers and we don't care for opaque enterprise sales practices.
We do a fair number of enterprise sales too, they require a negotiation because metering usage at an enterprise level is rarely practical. Even then the price is some calculation of usage/value + support. Keeps it simple, lets us attack a big market as a small team and stay focused on technical delivery, shortens the sale/negotiation time, and our customers know they're basically paying the same price as anyone else.