Microsoft is officially in the blackmail business now

The company puts further pressure on consumers to leave Windows 10 for Windows 11 by setting vague deadlines and leveraging Office

Microsoft made headlines again recently because of its plans regarding Office 365 support on Windows 10, but the truth is that the company has been handling the Windows 11 transition badly from the get go. (Image: Sunrise King, Unsplash)

It’s no secret that Windows 11 has not exactly been popular with consumers — in fact, given that Microsoft’s latest OS has been offered to hundreds of millions of Windows 10 users as a free upgrade, it’s fair to say that it’s been a resounding failure on several fronts. Windows 10, released almost 9 years ago, still commands more than 60% of the global Windows install base while Windows 11 has not even reached 35% yet, despite the fact that every new Windows PC sold since early 2022 is shipping with Windows 11.

This has been one of the roughest transitions in Windows history and one that could cost Microsoft precious market share in the years to come, even if Windows 12 turns out to be a great OS. The company knows this, which is why it’s been trying to have Windows 10 users upgrade to Windows 11, in various ways, over the past 18 months or so. Based on what most of them choose to do — that is, remain on Windows 10 — Microsoft has been largely unsuccessful in its efforts thus far, leading its management to extreme measures.

It’s latest tactic? Blackmail, pure and simple — on a scale never before seen in the tech industry. Here’s what this means and what choices consumers are left with in 2025.

What does Office have to do with anything?

It all started with a blog post published (since removed) in the Microsoft Community Hub, mentioning that when official support for Windows 10 ends — that’s October 14th of this year — support for the locally installed versions of all Office 365 applications will also end for this particular operating system (but obviously not for Windows 11). This means that Office apps running on Windows 10 will continue to work, but they will no longer receive feature updates or security updates, the latter clearly being the more important of the two.

There is no obvious technical reason why Office 365 applications cannot receive security updates on an older version of Windows.