Microsoft says deprecation of useful features is actually good and necessary, but we don't agree

Microsoft deprecates services and products, but the company doesn't ask its community about it.

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microsoft deprecation

As Microsoft is deprecating more and more of its products and services – with the latest of them being the practical Suggested actions, or Word’s popular Thesaurus capability – the Redmond-based tech giant has released a blog post discussing the process of deprecation, and more importantly, the necessity of it.

The company takes some time to discuss the lifecycle stages and terms of a particular capability before deciding to deprecate it. It concludes, naturally, that deprecation is not the end but rather an opportunity.

An opportunity to spend less on something that no longer does the job, an opportunity to improve productivity, and an opportunity to avoid all sorts of security risks associated with products and services that can no longer be updated.

While Microsoft has some good points, and ultimately, progress can’t be made without leaving behind old features, some features should not have been deprecated.

The best example is the deprecation of Thesaurus in Microsoft Word. This capability was not just one of the most useful on the platform, as it allowed you to quickly find synonyms of words intuitively without moving your eyes too much. However, it was (and still is) one of the most popular ones. Many users were rightfully disappointed, and some of them even considered quitting Word because of it.

But why has Microsoft deprecated it? Well, it wanted to replace the beloved capability with Copilot, and of course, many Word users don’t agree. They weren’t asked either.

Should we deprecate it or not? Is it still valuable for you or not?

But no, Microsoft decided to simply remove the feature and replace it with a tool that users have to pay for now (have you seen the new Microsoft 365 subscription prices?), and it takes twice or even thrice the time to do what Thesaurus was doing. And most of the time, Copilot doesn’t even compare to Thesaurus, as one Windows Report reader put it:

I hate that they have discontinued the Thesaurus. I have been attempting to use Copilot for this function, but it really doesn’t fill the need. My experience with Copilot is a disaster it will change the text frequently in making the sentence factually in error. Disastrous change in my opinion.

So, while we agree that some products and capabilities need to be deprecated – Windows Mixed Reality, or Cortana for that matter – to bring forward better and enhanced new tools, some, such as Thesaurus Paint 3D, or even WordPad, should be left alone.

Copilot won’t ever replace the feature, and people rightfully don’t like radical changes. AI still feels like a radical change for many Windows users. It’s the reason many won’t update to Windows 11, despite Windows 10 having less than 8 months before its EOS. People are still not using Copilot as much as Microsoft wanted: the tech company even allowed the new Copilot key to be remapped into opening something else rather than the intended Copilot app.

So maybe Microsoft should leave some of its services alone, especially the popular ones. Or at least it should ask users before deciding to retire valuable capabilities.

But does Microsoft ever learn? No, not really. Which is sad.

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