IT Professionals

Microsoft Shuts Down Office Genuine Advantage

Posted by on Dec 20, 2010 | 6 Comments

It was fun while it lasted. According to at least one report, Microsoft has shut down Office Genuine Advantage (OGA). And I hate to say it, but no one is going to be missing this any time soon. I’m sorry, but there was absolutely NO advantage with Genuine Advantage. It was a horrid thing to subject paying customers to and it is long overdue for a toilet based funeral in my opinion. Glad to see Microsoft stepped up to put it out of our misery.

Today this means doing basic stuff like downloading templates for Office no longer requires jumping through ridiculous MGA hoops just to get to the darned things. And for everyone involved, I see this as a good thing as it means no longer will we need to fight with this authentication system just to keep Office running as we’d like to.

Benefits of Office Genuine Advantage. When I read this I about died laughing. Yes, obviously there is a clear benefit to not using pirated software that may not be legal, up to date, or otherwise safe to use. But did that mean people needed to be nagged every time they wanted to do anything over the Web? Validation is simply not fun for those trying to do stuff like adding templates, etc.

Microsoft Shuts Down Office Genuine Advantage
Photo by bfishadow

The newly updated MGA page for Office reflects what it should. It asks folks to purchase legit copies of the software — because, let’s face it, those who are going to pirate software going to do so regardless of whatever hassles you subject your paying customers to. And I, for one, think it may be time to re-think Microsoft’s entire validation setup. Apple’s is fairly simple — why not follow its lead?

Speaking for myself, I am largely separated from anything requiring me to bother with one suite of office software over another. So for my needs, I have found a balance of OpenOffice and Google Docs have more than met the bill. While I am among the first to admit that OpenOffice’s spreadsheet doesn’t do well with really huge spreadsheets, it is just fine for most needs I think. Well, unless you are big on specific macros, I guess.

  • http://thirdworldcounty.us David

    MGA was always a PITA, and M$ is well rid of it. I find my own office app needs well met by Open Office, but I keep up-to-date versions of M$ Office installed for familiarity purposes; when a user wants an answer to an office app issue, he’s usually asking about a M$ Office app, so it’s handy to have around for that. Having to jump through hoops to keep M$ Office on a par with users’ installations (ALL THOSE TEMPLATES!!! for one *heh*) just as a reference installation (well, installations–I have fully legal copies of M$ Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 installed on various VMs) has always been irritating.

  • ron

    Too little, too late! I switched to Open Office a few years ago.

  • Bassim

    Good too for many people who live in countries where
    genuine MS products are not available while transferring
    fees abroad is either impossible or a very tedious task.

  • troy

    I dropped ALL M$ products as a result of Genuine Advantage and informed them I was doing so. They informed me that my legally purchased (read retail) copy of XP was not when I tried to update and activate it leaving my XP installation vulnerable and crippled. I let them know that I had been dabbling with linux and THEY pushed me to the other side. I haven’t looked back.

  • Andrew

    I really like Open Office, but it does have some issues when converting Word documents with tables, which are reasonably common. Despite that, I think I’ll switch to just OO in 2011 mostly due to the following WGA issue.
    I have a legitimate windows 7 that came with my laptop. I’ve had the WGA nag screen telling me this may be caused by spyware, would you like to resolve the problem? Trouble is the only solution Microsoft offer is to purchase another copy. I wrote to them, outlining my problem, and provided my product key and other details. Never heard back.
    Funny thing is, that I have a second drive with an illegitimate windows 7, that has never given me the grief of the constant WGA popup that the other version has.
    After over 6 months of WGA annoyance, I used a WGA fixer to get rid of WGA.
    The cost of a 2nd hand XP product key will probably be under $20. I’ve got a collection of about a dozen from machines being thrown out. These could be used to legitimately run Windows in a virtual machine, for those occasions when there isn’t a Linux, or Mac version of a program.

  • me

    So, nobody wants Cloud office?

    It looks like MS need a larger user base.

    I religiously updated my office until 2007. I had LESS features than the older. I no more can do simple things like drag and drop excel cell to a chart to add data. And the chart formatting is completely broken.

    I do not want more experiments, and I do not want my documents on the cloud.

    I don’t want more MS products not even for free.