Microsoft Pulls the Plug on Office Genuine Advantage

In news that largely went under the radar, Microsoft has quietly disabled the use of Office Genuine Advantage in its Microsoft Office products in the last round of updates. In a nutshell, OGA provided a mechanism to verify the legitimacy of a software installation as a prerequisite step prior to allowing
various add-ons for Microsoft Office to be installed such as templates and additional clipart.

Personally, I think this is a good move by Microsoft as OGA did nothing but hinder honest users of the software. Pirates and crackers will find ways around the various copy protection, product activation and verification measures implemented in software whilst a number of legitimate consumers suffer the consequences of false positives (i.e. their software is incorrectly identified as being counterfeit or non-genuine).

Whilst OGA has been abandoned the existing practice of product activation still remains for better or for worse. Thankfully, you will only need to undergo this process once at the time of initial installation (or if you change your product key for whatever reason). Whilst it would be nice if Microsoft stopped its product activation practices I don’t think we should be holding our breath.