Microsoft is installing Office Web apps on some computers without permission

Microsoft appears to be experimenting with the idea of automatically installing Progressive Web App (PWA) versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint without user permission, using the new Edge browser in Windows 10. That in itself wouldn't be so bad, after all, getting some form of free Office can be useful to most users. However, according to reports, the experiment is not limited to Windows Insider testers, and in the worst of cases, Windows will reboot your machine to apply these "updates" without your consent.

Microsoft Office PWAs are web-based versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint which can be accessed via a web browser like Edge or Chrome. Typically, if users want to use one of Office PWAs, they need to manually install them and the apps are then added to the Windows Start Menu, where they can be easily accessed.

However, Windows Latest points out that Microsoft appears to be experimenting with a different approach. Over the weekend, a number of Windows users found that the Office Web apps installed on their Windows 10 machines without first seeking permission. “We noticed that PWAs were installed on our devices on October 11 and Microsoft automatically created dedicated entries for Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint in the Start Menu,” Windows Latest explains.

Based on the information available so far, the feature appears to be part of a Microsoft Edge experiment (the newer Chromium version, which is pretty good).