No, Microsoft Office was not renamed Microsoft 365 Copilot - here's why you're confused

"Microsoft has a bad reputation when it comes to naming its products and services. Sometimes the company will pick a name for a product and then change it. Other times, it will use the same name or a similar name for different products. The names themselves can be confusing and cumbersome. All of that explains why many people have jumped to conclusions over the alleged renaming of Microsoft Office."

"The product page for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app states the following right off the bat: "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps, now including Copilot." With most people likely assuming that Office refers to the popular software suite, the implication here is that the Office name has been replaced by an AI-infused brand. But that's not the case."

"The Office mentioned on the product page is actually the website through which you can access free web versions of all the core programs. That site also proclaims: "Get free access to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint using Microsoft 365 for the web (formerly Office)." It gets more and more confusing Like other Microsoft products, Office did undergo a rebranding, but that happened a few years ago. In 2022, Microsoft rechristened Office to Microsoft 365. The idea was to market the suite as a cloud-based product,"

Microsoft has a poor reputation for confusing and inconsistent product naming, including reusing or changing names. Social posts claimed that Microsoft renamed the Office suite to Microsoft 365 Copilot, but that conclusion is incorrect. The Microsoft 365 Copilot product page uses wording that refers to the web portal formerly called Office, not the desktop suite. The web portal was rebranded to Microsoft 365 in 2022 to emphasize cloud-based access and free web versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The Copilot app is an AI-infused addition, and unclear phrasing on Microsoft's site has caused widespread misunderstanding.

Read at ZDNET