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Google Declares War on Microsoft
hajmola writes "According to an article in The Inquirer, 'Google has confirmed that it will launch free spreadsheet and word-processing software online and take on Microsoft in one of its biggest markets. Under the deal, Google will allow web users to access Sun's OpenOffice from a toolbar.'" This is full confirmation of a story from Tuesday. Forbes thinks this isn't anything to write home about, while InfoWorld disagrees.
Excuse me. StarOffice is Sun's. OpenOffice is ours.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
How does this help me when I have no network connectivity?
With all the nifty cool features of Office 12, I was wondering what OpenOffice was going to do to even it up. Let's face it: OpenOffice is pretty much tracking Office 2000. That's not really that bad. I can get all my work done with OpenOffice no problem. This web front end is a killer feature, especially as the new OpenOffice file format becomes more popular.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
1. Customers win as there are better cheaper choices
2. Google wins because well just because they are google
3. Microsoft because they can now say they have competition
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
What exactly does from a toolbar mean?
Is it a web app?
Where does it run from?
-- You're too stupid to be an atheist.
Googe has beaten Microsoft to the "software as a service" model. Bill has been talking about how "you have to offer software as a service" for a while now... It's ironic that someone else beat em.
bash: rtfm: command not found
A few years ago, the world's leading computer company almost went under because it didn't understand the paradigm shift that had happened.
Because IBM didn't understand the value of the desktop to the user, and Microsoft did, IBM lost big time. Only by totally reinventing themselves as a service provider FIRST and a computer company second did IBM survive.
Today, Sun and Google understand the value of the internet to the user, and Microsoft doesn't. They never have. That's why to this day, despite numerous losses and being forced to bow to consummer demands, MS thinks "embracing and extending" open network protocol standards is a good thing. Microsoft can not survive a market place they don't understand. No business can.
You either make money, or eventually you fail, that's the reality of business. In a world where computer software production is becomming more and more commodity production, MS doesn't know how to survive. Sun and Google do. So, Bill, meet Sam Palmisano, he can teach you a bit about what you will need to do after the bankrupcy . . .
has there been any legitimate hint that they are going to combine to offer spreadsheet/word processing via the web or is all of this just speculation?
.doc/.xls formats, but AJAX is completely different from a normal application GUI.
Not only is it just speculation, it's just speculation from stupid people.
There's no way in hell Google or anyone else is gonna make an AJAX-based front-end to StarOffice or OpenOffice.org; that's a retarded idea. Google could build their own AJAX-based word processor and spreadsheet, and maybe license some of the code for importing/exporting
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Ignoring the fact that this seems like more speculation (already well discussed with less then 10 comments), how exactly is this a threat to Microsoft and its Office family? Microsoft's main customer for it's 500$+ office suite is not home users, but businesses. Taking away some home users (half of whom where likely running pirated copies) is like a drop in the barrel.
For a business, dropping out $500 isn't much, especially when compared to wages (this is something OSS needs to understand when they try and convince businesses they're cheaper - the initial cost is meaningless, they want figures on the support cost). On the other hand, having your critical work depend on a network connection to some internet server is quite a huge risk (especially if you can't call up that internet server and demand instant human support for any little problem). And that's before you figure in the fact that Google's whole business model is personal information data mining. Even if Google is going to give their song and dance that they won't use it for evil, most companies aren't going to let a 3rd party store their documents, let alone run an automated program over every document they have mining out key information. As has been shown in the past "Google Hacking" is often used to get to information you weren't supposed to see. Can you imagine "Google Hacking" used for corporate espionage? A company wants to know if their competitor is looking into sprockets. So they take out an "ad" on Google specifically targeted at that keyword, but with completely different ad text. They then record IPs from incoming clicks to gauge if that ad was shown to people in the target company a lot, indicating that Google had mined that phrase from many of their documents and emails (gmail). And that's before you consider the fact that Google becomes a serious hacking target (even to hostile foreign governments), since a breach would affect tens of thousands of companies. With so many eggs in one basket it might be enough to warrent a physical breakin, stealing the data of thousands of companies, which are then sold to competitors or held for blackmail.
TFA says it's not the value of the software but rather the service and content that matters. I'd tend to agree with that statement. But a little part of me can't help but dislike and be paranoid about all these web services. Do you really want the future of web processing to be entirely web based and saved on somebody else's machine? G-mail bothers me like that -- even though I pretty much use it exclusively for e-mail now.
Well then don't use online services if they bother you. You have it totally within your power to use local programs over remote services. I believe Gmail even offers POP access as well?
I think it will be interesting to see how the public accepts the idea of using such online services but it's a far cry from, "...making all the desktops in the World into dumb terminals."
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Yes, MS has some strong arming advantages in their tactics to protect themselves from Google, but they've already been limited by the government, people are becoming frustrated with MSFT's stock performance over the past five years, and CNBC has been pointing out threats like Linux and the world is taking it seriously.
So, in addition to software quality, Google's war will be helped greatly by their brand, imo.
Google isn't declaring "war" on Microsoft. That isn't their way. I know several people who work at Google, and they just don't talk about "killing" companies the way Microsoft employees do. It truly is a different work culture there. If someone does use "the K word" at an all-hands meeting or something, the bosses are quick to say that they don't want the employees to think about things that way.
Google can be a resoundingly successful company even if Microsoft is alive and well, and they're fine with that. The only thing Google needs from Microsoft is for them not to put up artificial barriers to accessing Google's services, such as modifying IE in ways that hamper Google. So I'm sure Google would love to see everyone using a non-MS browser such as Firefox.
I really think Google's strategy is (or should be) to lift the key services and applications from the OS up into well-made web services. Word processing is a huge one for most of us. I'm still anxiously hoping that a calendar and scheduler (Outlook-type program) comes along soon to integrate with Gmail. Once Google fills those needs, assuming they do it well, I'll really enjoy having consistent services that I can use from anywhere, on any platform.
Well, no.
From the press release: "the companies have agreed to explore opportunities to promote and enhance Sun technologies, like the Java Runtime Environment and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite".
Which is quite different from "will launch free spreadsheet and word-processing software online".
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
Security? You mean the security to have your bank records subpenoaed by law enforcement/divorce lawyer/RIAA? Do you really want all of your data on a server out there subject to this?
That's my issue with G-mail. And the little known fact that after six months you lose a lot of protection relating to communications. I really do not want to see a future where all data is stored remotely. How do you know when you delete it that it's really gone? G-mail's privacy policy is purposefully vauge on this point.
That's what bothers me.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I think you may be missing another part of the value equation. Previously, people had to buy:
1) A Java runtime ($0)
2) The Google Toolbar ($0)
3) OpenOffice.org. ($0)
This cost users a prohibitively high price (3 times $0!) Now, thanks to these revolutionary decisions by Sun and Google, you only have to pay $0 once. One enormous $0 download. What a deal! A third the price for all the functionality.
The partnership could mark a shift away from the traditional method of distributing software through the Microsoft Windows system and bring greater visibility to such Java-based programs as OpenOffice.org.
You'll find the above paragraph is CNN's speculation on the press release, not part of the press release itself.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
That doesn't mean Google will launch an online/web-enabled write/spreadsheet application. That could be something as miniscule as linking to OpenOffice.org from the GoogleToolbar to "download" the application. Google has not confirmed the development of a web-enabled word processor. Everyone has simply drawn that conclusion based upon speculation.
I want something official or nothing at all.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
OpenOffice.org is Java-based? The same OOo where there was a big uproar for just having a Java-dependent component in?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It will only matters if they can make an open, standard doc format common for all users. They're just like any other office app competitor to Microsoft, even if their app is better and easier to "install". The doc format lockin is the MS ace in the hole.
.doc and .xls form. I know that they're the endpoints of any web link graph, when the user agent can't parse their MS formatted links to other docs. But so is .pdf, and we get a lot more of those results. While Acrobat is designed for Web use more than is Word (native format), there's simply so much more Word and Excel activity that I'd expect more Office doc results than the tiny amount I do see. So I suspect that Google isn't any better at parsing Office formats than is anyone else. Which bodes poorly for any Google advantage in migrating the world's Office format users to an open one (or to any one). They might have an advantage in money and smarts, but I don't see signs that they've already got experience in pulling off this epochal feat. Maybe that's why they've partnered with Sun on Ajaxing OpenOffice, but Sun hasn't proven able to slay that dragon, either.
I'm always surprised when I Google that I don't get a lot more results in
I wish them luck, but I don't have any serious expectations. It looks like they've identified the critical "world changing" market need, but no signs other than announcing a policy to exploit it that they can pull it off. That road is already littered with dried bones.
--
make install -not war
Why? OOo from a toolbar means a bloated install for the end user and does not match the spirit of other web-based ajax offerings. Ooo is 1990's technology and paradigm. I would have expected Google to be more forward thinking and develop something similar to writely, a true web-based (thin and light) collaborative writing tool.
Search for Kiko, Num Sum and Writely to get an idea of a web-based office.
Microsoft didn't win by being the best, they "won" by being the cheapest that works.
Word wasn't "better" than WordPerfect (if you are running a transcription service or something similar, people have the FASTEST results with WP 5.1 than ANY modern system), and Excel wasn't "better" than Lotus 1-2-3. However, they were less than half the price and you could get the bundle for less than either program individually.
Sure, business travelers will have no interest in virtual open office... at least for the forseeable future, but home users MIGHT. My wife uses web mail (Gmail), because she can check it at the office AND at home. If she works on a personal document, she emails it to herself. A virtual (GOffice) would work for her.
Sure, those of us that work on laptops on flights would have no interest, but that doesn't matter.
If Google grabs the bottom 50% of the market, than Microsoft is in trouble... they can't sell companies on paying $100/machine to OEM office if the competition eats their lunch because home users use Goffice and business users get site licenses.
Remember why software often is winner-take-all. The costs are 99% R&D, and 1% Variable, therefore, the contribution margin on each sale is close to 99% of price. If Microsoft loses 10% of Office, that could reduce their "profits" by 20%, 30%, or more... If they need 30% of the market to cover their R&D costs, and they hold 70%, than a 10% loss in marketshare loses 25% of their profits...
Google just needs to eat them from the bottom, and Microsoft is in trouble.
Microsoft's business REQUIRES being "good enough" for 70%-90% of the markets that they play in. The smaller market remaining forces their competition higher and higher up the chain.
Apple's OS R&D isn't going to be THAT MUCH smaller than Microsoft's, which forces Apple's prices to be higher (compare Apple's margins on hardware to Microsoft's OEM deals... for fairness, backout the gross margin that other manufacturers make, probably 10%, and you see Apple's OS "premium" which is 8x-10x Microsoft's OEM price)...
MS SQL Server forced Oracle and DB2 out of the low end of the market, which keeps them in the premium spot despite better tech, because MS SQL is "good enough" and therefore a price drop doesn't grab marketshare for the better players.
This is why Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and other Open Source solutions scare Microsoft... Microsoft can't sell a lot of web servers (compared to their marketshare in desktops or Office Suites), because LAMP is "good enough," which has REALLY hurt them... in that they thought they could leverage the Win95 monopoly into a server monopoly, which they never obtained.
Alex
Microsoft will now buy Google
Google will never sell out. No ammount of money has more value than the opportunity to be the new king of the hill, which leads not only to even more money, but also a lot of power.
When Microsoft signed the deal with Sun, they never realized that Google might want to use that against them. They can now use Sun software as a service via Google, and infringe on any of Microsoft's Office patents, without the threat of a lawsuit. OpenOffice does not have this ability. Microsoft WOULD sue Openoffice.org if it became very popular. Under the agreement, there is no limit to the way Sun could distribute the application/service.
Go Google!
Completely obvious, but it seems to me that the target market for office software would be the corporate world. The problem I see with Google's idea is that it runs on the web, no? I can tell you right now that the publicly traded company I work for would never switch to Google's online office software because of the security risk associated with us putting our closely held financials online with the potential of them getting stolen. Even if the software had never been broken, or if it ran on Java with no connection to the net once it were running, the folks that make the decisions around here would still perceive it to be a huge security risk and not give it the light of day. Just my $0.02.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
Sun and Google also said they would jointly promote Sun's Java Desktop operating system and its Open Office productivity software system, a free, open-source productivity software suite. The partnership could mark a shift away from the traditional method of distributing software through the Microsoft Windows system and bring greater visibility to such Java-based programs as OpenOffice.org.
They will promote a Java desktop program. Whoopee! More marketing, that's impressive.
It could mark a shift away from Microsoft. Whoopee! It COULD be something.
It does say Java-based programs, implying something running in the browser, but I wonder how many people will be happy waiting for some huge word processor applet to download to work on a document .
There sure isn't much substance there.
Infuriate left and right
That being said, I don't want to have to be internet-connected in order to work on a word processor document.
What about when internet access is as reliable as electricity?
Think about folks with electric stoves/ovens and microwaves. No gas cooking appliances. They don't seem to say, "That being said, I don't want to have to have electricity in order to cook a meal". People have bitten that bullet, and I'm sure they can count the amount of disruption they've experienced on one hand.
Yes, sometimes you have no internet access, but compare that to 10 years ago. Compare that to 20 years ago. It's come a long way, and in 10 years, service outages may be as commonplace as blackouts (i.e. pretty damn rare).
i for one want to be able to work on my document wherever i can get online, and leverage the sheer size of my Gmail account more flexibly. at university i never get the same box every time and they wipe them completely, word reinstalls to default settings every time i login. I connect to a central server for my files and thats the only degree of portability between machines. Not to mention being unable to get anything but http in the linux labs (they even borked SSH to their public linux Terminal server) they fear linux there. I want this portability badly. Sit down, open my personalised google, open my half finished report, resume working, save, close, logout. change rooms, repeat progress. all without stuffing round with my acurrsed central login, so i can use ANY machine to work on with any login, as long as ive got net access i can happily get to my work and work with my settings :)
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Data stored on your home computer is no less protected, as seen by recent lawsuits and search & seizures by the parties you mention.
I would beg to differ on that statement. Let's say I'm getting divorced and my wife's lawyer wants to subpoena all my e-mail looking for something to use against me.
If my e-mail is stored at G-mail I might not even know that they received copies of it. At least if it's on my PC at home it's going to be pretty obvious. Besides that I have control over my home computer and can delete data and be sure that it's gone with a few simple measures. You will never have that sort of control over data stored remotely.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That's because the rumors for Google tend to be GOOD ideas (as opposed to the Microsoft DivX hoax), and I think Google listens carefully to what's babbled on the net. They "get it".
That's what I see happening here. The problem is that it's just plain awkward to have to open a browser window do type a term paper. I don't know. I just think most people will sum it all up by saying, "Well it's definately annoying sometimes but I guess it's better than paying $500 for MS Office." But they won't have much good to say other than that. MS Office is a premium product. People who switch for whatever reason will miss many things about MS Office.
It's not going to be an overnight thing. But hopefully with many many more users OO will get much better providing a solution to 99% of what a normal home user needs an office product for.
The risk is that it won't be a smash hit. People will try it out and will not see much benefit over the MS Office that they already use for free at college/work or have already have paid for at home.
I hope it works but I'm doubtful.
OpenOffice(TM) is a trademark of some other company, not Sun. Therefore OpenOffice.org is the name of the LGPL'd part of StarOffice. It's in the FAQ if anybody actually bothered to read it.
OpenOffice.org name FAQ
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
The text formatting capabilities of Gmail just plain suck IMO. Admittedly, they are a great achievement having been implemented in a web browser but it's a far cry from being able to replace what Word can do.
Microsoft had (don't know if they still do) a "network" option for Office. I used to do tech support at Shell's WTC back in the mid-90s, where there was a constant battle over this. Hard drives were much smaller back then, and it was seen as a smart move to have as small a footprint on the local drive as possible (and the per seat was cheaper).
The only problem is, when the network went down, productivity went down with it. Nothing like a lab full of pissed-off research scientists going up the chain to get full-on, local installs done. The local install definitely made my life easier.
Except there hasn't usually been enough time between a rumor and the actual release to allow them to develop an entire new product driven off of customer speculation alone.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I'm convinced that the partnership (the ACTUAL one, not the speculation) is done for a very good reason. That means that Google wants Java available for an app, and bundling like they've done is a way to get it without making people hunt for a seperate install. That said, OO.o is not a Java app. They've got something else in mind.
There's been a lot of talk the last year or so about Google implanting a web server in Google Desktop, so they could run gmail while offline, and other apps as well. Maybe a web server written in Java? It frees them from writing to a certain OS, at least.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Open Office is most certainly *not* going to be a web based application. My guess is that it will be refitted to be launched by the google toolbar and allow you to use google as a storage area for your documents (do you really want to do that?). That's great that it's free though.
There is no war here, move along.
Amongst the many little nuggets of wisdom ive learned, such as "Duct tape is only as strong as the material you attach it too", "Giving linux for free to people happy to pay you to make it work is profitable" and "eventualy everything will wind up in some torrent". There is one thats appropriate at the moment.
"Sometimes a dirty hack Is the best soloution"
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Occurs to me that Google has no choice but to try to become Microsoft's death.
Microsoft had already long decided to kill Google. They've a Google-killer search engine, a maps adjunct, all that. They want Google dead, and being a monopoly, they can use dominance in their OS and Office products to spend any competitor to death.
But, Google decided to try to kill it's preordained assassin.
Google was on top in search engine software; Office-like software was free, for crissakes. Why not simply blend the two together? What would it hurt? Maybe Microsoft, if the world's annoyance with closed specs on its office documents achieves critical mass.
Google may become top dog, but only because the alternative was to be a dead dog.
If the spreadsheets are stored on the google servers where they are easilly accessed by other coworkers...
I'm tired of emailing my coworker a spreadsheet that is at a clients house, has to download the email open it, use it, close it, email it and hope I haven't done anything with it.
the beauty of this is that:
1) it mitigates "office document attachment" syndrome by letting you just post a link to your internet-stored document in e-mail instead of an attachment;
2) the above fact combined with web-based editing means that you don't have to care if someone has openoffice/staroffice installed before you send them an OpenDocument format document. they can view and edit it on-line.
in other words, web-editability destroys the lemming-lock-in effect caused by MS-Office ubiquity.
the only problem i see is the confidentiality aspect. i don't want google or anyone else having access to my document content. if they can solve this (either by storing documents encrypted at the client, or by permitting those that care to set up their own file storage via webdav over ssl or sftp or something.
Thinkfree office has exactly the same service...
http://www.thinkfree.org/
Yeah, try the link. All the page says is "Upgrade in process..... ".
Sure you save your documents on their server for free, but what good is that when you can only access them when Thinkfree is operational. At least when I store my documents on my own hardware I can, if I choose to, ensure that the data is available to me regardless of problems I may have with any particular piece of hardware or while I upgrade any particular component.
They've a Google-killer search engine
It has been a very long time since I last checked out the MS search-engine, so I gave it a try. First I went to google and typed 'microsoft search'. OK, the first result was right. I followed the link and typed 'google search'. Also a correct result, with even some ads sponsored by google. The layout of msn search is a complete and utter ripoff of google, so it's very functional. Then the hard test: searching for linux on both sites. To my surprise they produced similar results, no pages explaining why Linux is an evil insecure communist hippie-OS without any support, only links like linux.org and redhat.com.
What is friggin' wrong with them? Where are the evil tactics? I know they can do it, because that's what I got the last time! The MS engine is just as functional as the Google one! There is something very fishy going on there.. You're not going to tell me MS went nice all a sudden. Did they get some legal threats and remembered the DR-DOS debacle?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Google can no easier kill Microsoft then Sun could with the same product. Remember when OpenOffice came out it was thought that regular Office would go away. Besides a few high profile switches most businesses still use MS Office. Do you really see every company switching en-masse from a system everyone knows to one that is web based and sponsored by ads? Sun already proved that an Office system being compatible, having similar features and being free is not good enough to defeat MS. Google's will be no different except presumably offering more negatives such as advertising, requiring me to store documents on their server, and parsing of my data to target ads. Get back to working on freakin' search google, thats what made you your money.
Everyone is hyping this out of control, if you look at the actual deal, the main thing going on is that Google gets to have it's spyware-like toolbar installed when you install Java. Because the Java install needed more bloat.