Microsoft continues to confuse the world with its obsession with Copilot. Almost no one is very clear if Office is alive or not
“But then, does Office exist or not?” It is a question that seems trivial, but it is not so, and with good reason: the constant name and brand changes have meant that the Microsoft office suite is being the latest victim of his obsession with AI and with its avalanche of products with the Copilot surname. The usual Office is no longer what it was. The evolution of Office was relatively stable until 2020. The office suite, officially launched in 1990, made it possible to bring together all the office applications that Microsoft already had and that it would later expand. This is how we soon saw an Office that consisted of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and even Access and other tools. Changes and more changes. Since then the suite has been undergoing paradigm shifts… and name changes: 2010: The Office 365 brand is introduced as a cloud version of the traditional office suite. The goal: compete with Google Docs 2013: After the launch of Office 2013, Microsoft begins to promote the Office 365 service as the main alternative to access office tools 2017: Microsoft presents a second evolution of these services, which this time were aimed at companies and which it named Microsoft 365. This platform combined Office 365 with volume licenses for Windows 10 Enterprise, as well as some additional solutions. 2020: Office 365 change your name to Microsoft 365 2022: Microsoft announces that the branding “Microsoft Office” would be abandoned in favor of the “Microsoft 365” brand. Even so, Microsoft continues to sell perpetual Microsoft Office licenses for local installations. The latest version Today it is Microsoft Office 2024. 2025:Microsoft rename the Microsoft 365 app to Microsoft 365 Copilot, referring to the “Office/Microsoft 365 Hub.” This application is actually like an aggregator of the different Microsoft office tools (Word, Excel, etc.). And Perplexity adds fuel to the fire. A few days ago those responsible for Perplexity published a tweet in which they seemed to indicate that Microsoft had changed the name from “Office” to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app.” In reality, what had been renamed, as they point out in Windows Latestis the “Office/Microsoft 365 Hub”, but this name change had already been announced a year ago, in January 2025, as we indicated. Perplexity also added that this decision had caused “400 million users to become “AI users” overnight.” Both the tweet and that statement were somewhat exaggerated, and did not help clarify a situation that is already confusing. Microsoft clarifies it. Microsoft officials have indicated in The Verge and other means that: “We have not made any recent changes to the names of our Office applications. Word, Excel and PowerPoint, the Office applications included in the Microsoft 365 productivity suite, remain unchanged In November 2022, we just renamed the Office hub app for web and mobile to the Microsoft 365 app. In January 2025, we updated it to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app to reflect its role in bringing the Copilot and Microsoft 365 productivity experiences together in one place.” More trouble with the Office.com website. Although Microsoft hasn’t just “killed” the Office brand, it doesn’t seem to want it to be used much either. In fact, if one goes to the office.com website What you see as soon as you load it is a message that says “We welcome you to the Microsoft 365 Copilot application”, or in other words, that “hub” or aggregator from which you can launch the different office tools in the Microsoft suite. It doesn’t seem like a lucky decision. like others in this line in recent times. How to destroy a recognizable and recognized brand. The truth is that Office was a brand recognized by users, but for years Microsoft has wanted to transform it into part of something bigger. The intention, we believe, was to try to make it clear that Microsoft 365 was more than traditional office tools, but the only thing that has been achieved With these changes it is adding more and more confusion. Office is still alive as a product and as a brand, but it has ended up being absorbed by these new brands and, of course, because of Microsoft’s obsession with AI and with Copilot. In Xataka | Thanks again, Microsoft, for letting us buy Office 2024 instead of putting up with another subscription