Microsoft confirmed on Wednesday initial reports indicating its plans to no longer support native Android Office apps on Chromebooks starting next month. The company said its Office app will be removed from the Google Play Store for Chromebook users on Sept. 18.
While the news will only affect a small demographic of users that still use Microsoft Office on Chromebooks, it is still a significant downgrade for those who still use the Chrome OS-based laptops. Microsoft clarified that native Office apps will still be available on other Android platforms and the move discontinuation will only affect Chrome OS devices.
Rumors about Microsoft's plan to pull support for native Office apps had started around June this year. Earlier in the month, Microsoft updated its support page to reflect its planned changes. The page that contained instructions on how to install and run Office on a Chromebook was changed to instructions on how to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, and OneNote online.
Once the company halts its support for the native Office apps, Chromebook users will need to shift to its web-based apps on Office.com and Outlook.com. While users can still do their work on web-based apps, they are clearly an inferior experience when compared to the native Android apps that are still available now. The biggest change that will likely put off some users is that the web-based apps will require a constant internet connection as they do not provide any offline access.
Microsoft has not provided any clear reasoning behind its decision. A Microsoft representative said in a statement that the decision to halt support for native Office apps on the Chromebook was made to provide the "most optimized experience" for Chrome OS users.
Some experts have speculated that the move may be Google's way of pushing customers to try out its productivity tools and software such as G Suite. The collection of productivity and collaboration tools includes apps such web apps such as Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Forms, Google Drive, and Gmail.
Chromebook users who are not yet ready to shift to those apps will likely have no other choice but to ditch their current devices and buy a traditional laptop running Windows instead.
