It’s official, the Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage program is officially retired. According to the Redmond camp, the program has served its purpose and it’s no longer needed to check whether customer are running legal copies of Office. Is this the end of Microsoft Office piracy protection or does Microsoft has an ace up its sleeve?
Somewhere a group of software pirates sharing hordes of Microsoft torrents are celebrating. The news that Microsoft was ending the Office Genuine Advantage program is simply shocking. Officially, Microsoft offered the following response via email to ComputerWorld, “The program has served its purpose and thus we have decided to retire the program.”
Starting back in 2007, Microsoft required all users to validate their copy of Office with OGA. In 2008 they began nagging users with pop ups reminding they needed to upgrade their counterfit copies. The news that the program has been retired may be bittersweet, Microsoft is reportedly making “several new investments” that will allow them to “engage with customers and help victims of fraud”.
Certainly we don’t expect Microsoft to slow their efforts to prevent privacy, after all at the end of the day it has a significant impact on their bottom line. How the company plans to attack the growing problem of piracy is the real question. For now, OGA links redirect to the Windows 7 main page and Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) has been renamed Windows Activation Technologies (WAT).
Current Microsoft Office Users, both PC and Mac, will continue to be required to enter their 25-character product key on installation. For now, that will be the extent of Microsoft’s piracy prevention, at least until the next generation of Genuine Advantage products begin to ship in future version of Office.
Let us know what you think about Microsoft’s move to end the Office Genuine Advantage program? Do you think a similar step should be taken for Windows 7? Is a genuine product key really enough protection to stop the piracy of software? Sound off!
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