Curious that Microsoft doesn't mention this and pushes their expensive licenseware instead, especially if one were happy with WordPad which has compatibility is

Curious that Microsoft doesn't mention this and pushes their expensive licenseware instead, especially if one were happy with WordPad which has compatibility issues with Word documents, so you managed to avoid the ecosystem this far but now you're recommended to buy in after all. Yeah of course they wouldn't recommend a competitor, but to me that makes it seem like this announcement is an attempt to get a handful more people to buy Word by removing a finished and functional product that was fast and available to anyone with a Windows computer