Clipart is gone, finally. Microsoft’s dated and depressingly plain image library is finally departing from Office, replaced by an in-app version of Bing image search, which is specifically calibrated to bring up images that won’t get you in trouble for breaching copyright.
Users on Office will now have to use the Bing Image Search feature to get images into documents, that or use already saved images from SharePoint or OneDrive. The Bing service uses a filter based on Creative Commons,l which should be able to bring up results showing images anyone can use without fear of breaching copyright.
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Of course, this can be turned off, meaning pretty much all images can be used to brighten up a document – Microsoft warns users that it’s their job to respect people’s copyright online in their official blurb, which more or less means ‘don’t blame us if you get caught’.
Clipart is gone though – the image library featured some very dated, much loved images and cartoons and has been active since some of the earliest versions of Office.
Most famously it has been the laughing stock of Office, featuring images so outdated that a Clipart search for ‘cell phone’ brings up brick phones from the late 80’s.
At least the new Bing system offers the ability to include much more up to date pictures, however the likelihood of people carrying on with simply lifting images from whatever website they can find them on is still high.
Microsoft’s removal of Clipart has been part of a wider windingdown of obsolete and aging services and products from their lineup, to bring the entire Microsoft product family more in line with modern systems, presumably before the arrival of ultra-modern Windows 10.
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Late October saw MSN Messenger bite the bullet, the venerable service which once competed with AOL Instant Messenger finally being brought to its knees. The Microsoft we knew and loved as teens (well, at least this writer’s generation) are slowly declining and fading away.
There was a time, a time before Facebook, when Clipart and MSN were staples in the diet of the early 00’s computer generation. But, all good things must come to an end… and hey, if it’s any consolation, all of Clipart’s images were crude at best, easily superseded by royalty free image libraries online, such as the ones you might find today on the new Bing feature.
Source: Office Blog
Via: Techspot