Some big name stores still only have WordPad as the available word processor for certain office/internal management sections. The Walgreens I worked for during my HS/College years did and still does; only having access to WordPad in the thin clients. According to the IT guys coming around every now and then to do a major server update, it was Walgreens cheaping out as the branch and main offices actually use a corporate MS Office suite.
That's arguably a smart use of resources when you consider that the store-level users of those systems likely have little need for a full Office suite. Even a majority of those using MS Word likely rarely make use of the advanced features that can't be found in something like Wordpad, and not having menus cluttered with piles of unused features may even make the software easier to use.
Also I've been using Office 2000 forever and had no reason to update it (by the way I hate ribbon bars but maybe that's me just being ancient). The only thing "newer" versions do for me is handle docx, xlsx, etc files, but there's a patch for Office 2000 to allow that, so I'm not worried. (Oh yeah, and a full install is less than half a gigabyte...)
Yeah, the ribbon UI is just worse. And that goes for a lot of the changes that companies like Microsoft have been making to their software over the years. Back when standard user interface features were first being refined back in the 90s and early 2000s, a lot of effort was put into perfecting how interface elements looked and behaved for optimal usability. These days, companies want to throw away those standards and replace them with redesigns that they feel "look nicer", even if they are arguably worse, primarily just to make the software look new so that they can resell you the same thing with a fresh coat of paint. Office suites are a prime example, as the core functionality has remained mostly unchanged for over 20 years. They want people to subscribe to 365 for $70+ a year, because they know that it's hard to convince people to rebuy an office suite every few years when the features and functionality remain nearly unchanged.
You can if you want to get ransomwared/hacked often.
While not impossible, it seems unlikely that using an unsupported version of Wordpad is likely to get people hacked. Unlike the full version of Office, it lacks scripting or web features, and if not many people are using it, then it's not going to be a prime target for hackers either.
I work in a computer centric office 150+ people.
No one I asked has used it in years. Many did not know of its existence.
None of my family members use it.
I think your "almost everyone' is a bit misguided.
A "computer centric office" is probably not going to be an unbiased demographic though, especially if the company has something like Word installed on all of their systems. And I would suspect that you might play a role in having other word-processing software installed on your family's systems. Now I certainly don't think "almost everyone uses and loves" wordpad either, but I'm sure it still has a good number of users, especially among the less tech-savvy that may just use whatever default program came installed on their system.
In functionality, WordPad is between NotePad and Word.
Apparently, MS has decided that its user base is not large enough to continue to expend the resources on keeping it up to date.
And in light of all the other options, out it goes.
GoogleDocs, LibreOffice, online Word....
Complain to them. Not me...
As I pointed out before, it's unlikely that there are any significant resources being spent on keeping Wordpad up to date. It has a rather limited feature set as far as word processors go, and word processors in general don't tend to change a whole lot over time. The cost of keeping it around would undoubtedly be next to nothing for a company like Microsoft, and the only logical reason for getting rid of it would be to attempt to encourage its users to pay for an Office subscription instead. So it's not necessarily about it not having a user base, so much as it might be considered an obstacle to pushing more Office subscriptions.
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