Microsoft kills its Office app on Chromebooks

We don’t know who or how many people are using Microsoft Office on a Chromebook, but if that’s you, you’re going to have a downgraded experience. Microsoft will soon be phasing out its Office for Android app on Chrome OS, the company confirmed to Wednesday About Chromebooks. The app will be leaving the Google Play Store on September 18, when users will need to sign in via the web through Office.com or Outlook.com. As 9to5Google notes, the Office app will still be available on Android phones, even if it disappears from Chrome OS.

While logging in through the web app should work in a pinch, it’s clearly a lower experience than what the Android app has offered so far, not to mention what Google’s G Suite can do on its platform. – native form controlled by Google. In particular, be aware that the web app offers almost no offline access, which users liked about the Google Play Store version.

It’s unclear why Microsoft is making the change, except that the company described the move in a statement to About Chromebooks as an “effort to provide the most optimized experience for Chrome OS / Chromebook customers”. Whatever the intention, this will likely give Chromebook users another reason to try G Suite, if they haven’t already. Or, maybe they’ll ditch their Chromebooks and download the Android app on Windows 11.