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Microsoft has had issues with licensing and its technical support for some time. Like most US technology companies, the majority of their support is outsourced to 1099 workers or small businesses and LLC with a partnership agreement. These are normally one way partnerships meaning that the partner is allowed use of the logo, specific marketing material and branding, and designators such as skill level ratings or industry titles. Microsoft does not receive licensing for co-branding, use of partner trademarks except in directory listings, nor do they receive rights to any code they develop in Visual Studio, the .NET platform, or any other products such as MS SQL, PowerShell, XAML, or even Batch files.
Overall, this works well because Microsoft is a for profit business instead of a non-profit or government agency. If a partner has developed something that is useful to Microsoft but that the partner can not bring into a widespread market, Microsoft has funds and resources to purchase licensing and sublicense to end users or other partners. This is a business deal that few partners get to experience but that does happen for many individuals and businesses. It often comes with an MVP designation, additional partner benefits such as access to pre-release or not yet developed software, and payment for the partner services at Microsoft Headquarters or a local branch office.
Microsoft has an overall time line of how its evolved and how its partners, employees, and business alliances have changed. The 50th Anniversary of Microsoft's founding or establishment was in 2025.
| 1975 | 1985 | 2003 | 2012 | 2016 | 2022-2025 |
| Microsoft Established | Windows 1.0 Released | Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP | Windows 2008 R2/2012 and Windows 7/8.1 | Azure, Co-Pilot, and 365 | Covid-19 Recovery |
| Major Milestones of Microsoft's first 50 years | |||||
While Microsoft computers are sold at retail, that is not normally their primary market and neither is small business. That is changing and has been evolving over the past 15+ years. In the 1980s personal PCs were hobby items for the wealthy, and until recently, small business often relied on retail software unless they had a local IT partner that can aggregate the needs of many small businesses. For a long time, Microsoft's primary market has been enterprises with several thousand users and their secondary market has been businesses with several hundred licenses, sometimes over a thousand.
Microsoft prides itself on providing excellent customer support and considering the needs of all users that have an interest towards its products. It famously has released support updates way past a products EOL and extended a licensing agreement for users that were upset about a discontinued product.
While this story goes back to Streets and Trips which can be loaded on a laptop or netbook with a Microsoft USB enabled GPS transceiver, or viewed alone while driving and pulling over to check directions. The latest update is that Microsoft completely disabled Windows Map app for users that had already grown accustomed to the interface and had downloaded offline maps in July of 2025. Microsoft took several steps to indicate it would no longer support the app.
While it is clear that the current Microsoft team wishes to cease support for Windows Map app, the way it went about it is aggressive and insensitive to the computer user needs. A statement was released asking users to "switch to web based alternatives like Bing Maps".
This obviously does not work well for those who are dependent on offline maps. While their data, addresses, and routes are still on the device, they can no longer access the app, not even to view their already downloaded maps and saved addresses.
In the U.S. computer users are migrating back to offline computing and stronger prosecution for computer tampering. Some policy makers suggesting that a virus infection from a command and control server be treated similar to a home invasion or hostage situation, in addition to doing the regular accounting for property injury and data loss.
This is in contrast to Asian computing systems that have an over 85% adoption rate for cloud services with most users preferring smartphone or tablet only as their primary device outside of work. In many cases a smart device user has only one device in Asia, their current smartphone or tablet.
End of Support in the middle of a software cycle: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/microsoft-publisher-will-no-longer-be-supported-after-october-2026
Publisher was first released in 1991 and is still the preferred desktop publishing app for many users. While Word or PowerPoint can be used to create flyers, posters, and other desktop publishing products, giving users less than 6 months to get off of publisher and find something else is beyond unprofessional.
While the Office 365 team can add and remove software from its software suite, it should understand that its product is closely tied to the perpetually licensed Office editions. Office 2024 has an EOL of 2029 and while Microsoft can decide that it will no longer offer publisher after 2029, it can not push an update to the OS to disable already installed and licensed software. Additionally, long term business plans, which Microsoft is aware of, would indicate that it can not remove Publisher as an available software from the 2024 edition. After 2029, Microsoft allows software activation until the EOL date, it can make the software, no longer available.
This means that the Office 365 team has some decisions to make based on the following considerations:
A reasonable solution is to follow the regular Office software cycle and to leave the announcement as is. In a separate notification, release a survey allowing 365 users to download and try Publisher and to indicate if this is something they would like or not like on their account. While the initial reaction may be to restrict support past 2029 or to disable Publisher at that date, a more reasonable solution is the following.
Those indicating they would like to use Publisher before 2026 will receive support for their existing account only, and no additional licenses if they are installed by October 2026. This will be notated on the 365 account. All other users will not have the option to install Office Publisher after that date. After that date, the suggestion to use Word or PowerPoint is valid. However, for organizations that have thousands of publisher files, the suggestion to convert those files to PDF is a little shortsighted.
Users migrating from Publisher to Word or PowerPoint may need 10-15 years to complete their migration cycle. The 10 year migration cycle is reasonable with a 15 year migration being considered extended support, often at an additional cost. This means that 2035 is a more reasonable cutoff date for those who are currently on Publisher or will be installing for small to medium projects or to help with migration before October 2026.
The Microsoft Team attempted to setup consumer computers in a remote directory services configuration where their Microsoft account was the primary account controller. This had mixed results and it is possible to setup computers offline, without a Microsoft account and with local accounts only. This issue after that seemed to be the browser reconfiguring the PC as web kiosk for their Microsoft account after signing into one Microsoft app on the computer. That has been fixed.
The fixes are working for both Windows Home and the Professional systems upgrade. A Home user has the option to go cloud based or local based, they can convert back and forth without much trouble, technicians should be trained on data backup and migrating to a new profile if there are issues. There should be very few issues because a lot of work has been put into establishing permanent profiles on a local based PC. If a profile issue exits, only a minimal amount of data should be removed to external hard drives without the users consent. This has has a confidentiality clause.
The control panel should not be removed from the Windows OS as this has over 20 years of engineering going into the interface. The latest Windows team worked around this by using API calls and it is now integrating many of that functionality into the new Windows settings interface which will eventually replace control panel for most users. Some of the functionality is not working such as font installation. Most of it works well and it is clear the Microsoft team had a professional intent in developing the new interface. Most computer users view this as UI/UX updates with some engineering. The interface will be examined by computer experts and there should be a reporting mechanism to report critical functionality errors. This may require former Microsoft partners or MCSEs to visit Microsoft Headquarters, this would most likely not be for no pay.
Updates - Latest changes
Based on modern computing patterns and common law in engineered products, most users do not want to run updates any more often than a few times a year. The updates are viewed as mitigations for defective products. As an analogy, a car manufacturer would not be expected to find users of their vehicles to do oil changes or change the seat covers. The twice a year updates are viewed as reasonable, UI/UX changes have been asked to have a preview, accept or reject function, and the Windows Defender updates are viewed as reasonable to run weekly or even a few times a week.
While it may seem counterintuitive to allow AV updates without allowing OS updates, the AV updates should only remove the virus, as many times as needed. This creates evidence of tampering or other electrical system failures. The yearly updates would then fix all the resulting issues since the last update, and at that point any viruses may or may not continue to infect a specific computer depending on the users computing habits.
This is how enterprise systems are run, its how engineered products are expected to function, and its how the consumer and courts understand purchases to work in order to have a valid claim of warranty or liability. Most users don't expect the manufacturer or vendor to pay when damage is caused by their own computing habits. However, they do expect instructions on proper operation and more control over changes that go into their computing system, many of which are purchased and not leased. These changes and understandings to computer development processes will allow Microsoft to be considered a worthwhile and modern OS into 2040.