Microsoft has long been gunning for Chromebooks, but its latest effort to secure a piece of the low-cost laptop market has failed dismally.

Budget educational computing is now Google's game to lose Microsoft is discontinuing support for its Windows 11 SE variant meant to compete with ChromeOS in the education space, leaving schools that chose Microsoft over Google in the lurch just four years after the cloud-based Windows variant was released.

Microsoft is ending support for Windows 11 SE next year, five years after it launched the operating system on low-cost laptops that were designed to compete with Google Chromebooks. Windows 11 SE was only available on devices for education customers, such as schools, and it was supposed to convince them not to switch to Chrome OS.