The Death of Clippy
AppScout interviews Office's Group Program Manager, Jensen Harris on the subject of Office 2007. Harris reveals that Clippy, the bane of all semi-sentient Office users everywhere, is officially dead. The decision apparently revolved not around the passionate hatred for the unfortunate sprite, but simply out of a desire for UI coherency.
Personally, I think clippy represents what is wrong with office more than anything else. For most users Office is far too complicated, and has far too much functionality, so it "needed" a way to inform average users how to use some of the features.
Personally, I see three classes of Office users and there seems to be a reasonable argument that there should be three seperate classes of Word/Office for these people; the classes are students/home use who want something which they can write a paper or resume on, office workers who want a little more control over their presentation, and professionals who want complete control over their presentation.
influential or at least not as feared by MS leadership. The REAL reason clippy was inflicted on us was because he was (as another slashdot poster mentioned) the "last piece of MS Bob technology." The project manager for MS Bob is now better known as Mrs Bill Gates.