Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward

There’s an important generational component that’s getting missed here.

Most children (American children, at least) grew up on Chromebooks. That instills a certain expectation of how these things work — documents save themselves.

To switch to Microsoft Office means adding a cryptic, unnecessary-seeming extra step. I imagine it feels something like having a laptop that's designed to be shut down before closing.

You’ve all heard the stories about college CS students who have to be told what a folder is — and those are the kids who actually want to work with computers. Now step back to the next generation of lawyers and nurses and novelists and think about their lifetime experience.

Microsoft is just chasing the puck.

You can have auto-save and automatic file naming without cloud storage

But why?

The Chromebook user makes a doc, closes the lid, and finds their doc on their phone or web later.

Why wouldn't the Windows user get the same UX?

The expectation is that your data's available anywhere. Even linux users are going to want backups of their own choice so it's available anywhere.