Search for "cheap microsoft office" on Bing, Microsoft's search engine, and you'll be surprised what comes up. In addition to the usual Microsoft commercials, the arena search results are a collection of websites seeking your attention. An ad pointing to Getmsoffice.com also offers a direct download button to Softwarekeep and is the largest one above the fold. The second organic result in the SERP (search engine results page) is for a website called softwareonlinedeal.com, the fourth is softwareproworld.com.
(Image credit: Future / Desire Athow) (Image credit: Future / Desire Athow) The common thread of these sites? They ship all Microsoft Office at cheap, absurdly cheap prices. Softwareonlinedeal sells Microsoft Office Professional 2019 for €189.99 for a download and product key. Microsoft is selling it online for $439.99, a discount of nearly 57%. But there is even better (or worse, depending on your position). TechRadar was able to purchase a working copy of Microsoft Office 365 for five devices and 5TB for Mac and PC for a total of €1.35 (approximately €1.68). By comparison, Office 365 Home with six users and 1TB of storage costs $99.99 per year; This is almost a 100% reduction given that you have a lifetime subscription, a contract that does not expire. At the time of writing, the vendor claims to have sold over 50,000 keys, though several accounts have already been assigned (ours had only around 540 keys with less than 100 positive feedback recorded). You have a login, password, and login URL through the eBay messaging system. We were able to sign in and download Microsoft Office from what appeared to be the actual backend of an Office 365 Education account (Office 365 A1 Plus for students). Office isn't the only Microsoft product getting incredible discounts. We bought a Windows 10 Professional license key for €1; you get a Google Drive key and a link to download the coupon ISO. We didn't download or install it, but since the provider received a lot of positive feedback, it was probably a positive experience. You can even contact the seller on WhatsApp.
(Image credit: Future / Desire Athow) (Image credit: Future / Desire Athow) At the time of writing, Ebay has hundreds of listings of extremely cheap licenses for Microsoft Office and Windows 10 available for sale. Clearly, this is industrial-scale hacking that costs Microsoft tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Microsoft's position on this is clear. "With the exception of product key cards distributed with certificates of authenticity (COAs), Microsoft does not distribute product keys as stand-alone products. If you see a listing on an auction site, an online classified ad, or another product of online advertisements, it means that these keys are probably stolen or forged, "says the corresponding page from Microsoft. When we shared our results with the Microsoft PR team, the response was this. "We encourage customers to purchase genuine versions of Windows and Office 365 from Microsoft or one of our trusted partners. According to industry experts, using pirated software, including non-genuine Windows and Office 365, increases the risk of malicious programs, fraudulent public disclosure of personal information, and increases the risk of performance or poor performance features malfunctioning." It's a less aggressive tone than Microsoft's earlier talk of billions of dollars in potential revenue lost due to piracy. What has changed then?
A new philosophy
Microsoft matured after experiencing some of its most difficult years during the Ballmer years. Under the auspices of Satya Nadella, the company regained its raison d'être after a midlife crisis and turned out to be a very different and more accommodating society. Integrating a Linux kernel into Windows 10 or adopting Android as its own operating system would have been perceived as heresy just a few years ago, and yet they have happened. Under this new CEO, hell has frozen over multiple times as the company's share price has gone from €37.50 to almost €138, making it the only company with a market share of $XNUMX trillion and perhaps even more important, without being ruined by the privacy fiasco that has turned out to be more than a place for the four members of GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon). Ironically, Microsoft is where it is because it hasn't found a real alternative to Google's Android and has had to double down on business, the public sector, and businesses. Not having to make money selling your user data has been a powerful catalyst and force for change for Microsoft. For the better, in hindsight. The promotion of Nadella, who was executive vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Group, also meant that turning Microsoft into a service-oriented company would only accelerate.
(Image credit: Shutterstock.com) (Image credit: Shutterstock.com) With commerce and cloud as top priorities, it could be argued that software piracy by consumers was seen as minor. We can't and probably never will be able to prove it, yet our conclusions are hard to ignore. Software piracy, as a topic, is rarely mentioned on the Microsoft website. The last major article on counterfeit software and fraudulent subscriptions is from April 2018 and mentions the tens of thousands of people who report such practices to Microsoft each year. Important anti-piracy documents no longer exist; Microsoft has abandoned initiatives like Playing It Safe, a global initiative launched in 2013 to raise awareness of software piracy issues, and closed its IP infringement newsroom. This falls into ridicule though once you try to report fake software on the Microsoft website. The de facto page is the one featured in the 2018 blog post mentioned above. A quick look at what it can report leaves the astute observer no doubt as to the age of this page.
(Image credit: Future / Desire Athow) (Image credit: Future / Desire Athow) The last operating system mentioned is Windows 8, which is two generations old. Same for Windows Server and Office (as of 2012). There is no mention of Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Office 2016, or other newer products. This is perhaps the most striking example of Microsoft's seemingly sloppy approach to software piracy. But is everything bad?