Ad Funded MS Works

There has been some info on the web on a new version of Ad-funded MS Works that would basicall be free to the end user. Works has a stuff like a low end version of Word, address book etc. I have never used it as I have always had access to Office Professional.

Though most people in the US do not seem to like the idea, I think this is something that would be of great value in a country like India. I think something like Office Home funded by ads would be a great sucess in India or other countries where buying a license of Office is very expensive and there is a growing number of home users. For such non-technical users, like my parents, this would make a perfect way to use Office software legally. Most of these set of users currently use illegal copies of Office (most probably provided by their vendor or friends). I have rarely come across this user set using OpenOffice (I mostly find OpenOffice being used by techies rather than end customers) or other free tools. So it would make perfect sense for MS to have a Ad-funded version of home office for these customers. Though MS Works is not Office Home, I think this is a good first step and maybe it would lead to a ad-funded Office suite at sometime in the future.