Summary: Is the money worth it, CNX? You are putting off readers, very few of whom are likely to be using antique versions of Microsoft Office; better to focus on news, not spamfarming
They don't care about the users and issuing a few bytes with random characters costs them next to nothing. It gives them control over billions of human beings.
If even one media outlet told you in 2010 that Microsoft would fall from 100% (of Web requests) to about 1 in 8 Web requests, you'd probably struggle to believe it