Office Genuine Advantage is no more

Piracy programme has served its purpose, says Redmond

Microsoft has quietly retired its Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) programme, which was part of the company's anti-piracy strategy.

However, other components of the Genuine Advantage programme, such as Windows Genuine Advantage, are continuing.

While part of an overall strategy to weed out pirated copies of Microsoft's products, OGA was largely viewed as an annoying gate-keeper by users wanting to download add-ons to Office.

"Having paid thousands to Microsoft in licence fees, it always seemed irksome of them to ask me to validate the authenticity of my copy every time I wanted a new Word template," one network manager told Computing. "I understand why they did it, but I'm glad it's gone."

OGA's demise came to light in an independent blog after an anonymous tip-off. The reason given by Microsoft is that OGA has "served its purpose".