Other Microsoft Office alternatives emerged, too, that catered to particular niches, such as cross-platform office suites and open-source office tools. Google offered its online office suite for free, so it quickly captured much of the market.

But around 2006, Microsoft felt pressure from web-based document editors such as the Google Docs Editors suite from rival Google, so an online version of Microsoft Office now exists known as Microsoft 365. Traditionally, you were required to download the office suite to your Windows computer and run it offline, and some people still use Microsoft Office this way.