Microsoft is killing off Clip Art in favor of Bing Images

Back in the ‘90s, Clip Art took over Word and PowerPoint files thanks to the thousands of office workers and students who used the images as a way to "improve" their documents. These days there are a large number of free images available on the web, and Microsoft is recognizing this by killing off its Clip Art portal in recent versions Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. "The Office.com Clip Art and image library has closed shop," explains Microsoft’s Doug Thomas. "Usage of Office’s image library has been declining year-to-year as customers rely more on search engines."

While most references to Clip Art disappeared with Office 2013, users were able to insert the old-school images into documents using an Office.com Clip Art option. That is now being replaced by Bing Images, with Microsoft filtering images to ensure they’re based on the Creative Commons licensing system for personal or commercial use. Most of the new images are much more modern, instead of the illustrated remnants of the past. Clip Art might be facing the same Office-related demise as the great Clippy assistant, but let the images below remind you of the good old times before the modern-era takeover.