The Office Web Apps, as they were called before, have been free ever since they were released in 2009 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Apps https://en.

The Office Web Apps, as they were called before, have been free ever since they were released in 2009 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Apps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Apps). They've just always been somewhat hidden inside Skydrive (which has also now been rebranded as Onedrive). This is nothing new, per se, just a launcher page that lets you directly access each of the web apps instead of having to launch the apps from inside Skydrive's file explorer.