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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.
Does anyone know of any previous cases where companies have taken fairly successful desktop applications and made them accessible on the web?
quite a few people would use a service like this. Not for anything private, but the same sorts of things that I use gmail for. It would be great to have access to documents at home, work, overseas anywhere!
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All the power to them if they suck some marketshare from Office. But there is one thing about the direction that all this is taking that bothers me.
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.
I'm not a big fan of making all the desktops in the World into dumb terminals -- even if that means some measure of freedom from Microsoft.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Why doesn't Google partner with Sun to release the product in the retail and OEM markets? If you could buy a PC with their office suite pre-installed, it would help them both and send MS into a tizzy. I, for one, am not interested in doing my word processing over the web.
Having your documents online is more conveniant and more secure. You wouldn't have to pass them around to all the different PC's you use. It is more secure because most at home users computers are riddled with virus's and spyware. A good online office solution is why Google's stock price is so high. They may or may not get there but if anyone has the tools and business culture to do it would be Google. To accomplish a good online Office Suite one would have to play well with others in the standards department and be willing to give some control away. Neither of which Microsoft is capable of doing.
Cool! Now I can delete the 1GB of files needed to operate Office XP!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Well, most big companies don't sign partnership agreements for the purposes of just looking cool. Google doesn't run Solaris (they use Linux), nor do they use Sun servers (they use cheap white boxes). So, why else would they "partner" with Sun? Google isn't going to swap our the OS on 1000's of servers even if Solaris was FREE, nor are they going to switch hardware. SO...what else does Sun have to offer, StarOffice which competes with MS-Office. It's been pretty obvious Google is targeting MS, since they hired away the guy (Dr. Lee) who was helping MS develop thier strategy for the worlds biggest market (China) until he fell into disfavor with Bill and/or Steve.
But really using apps over the network is NOT I repeat NOT new. When I started in software in the early 1980s all we had were cheap green-screen Televideo 9600 buad terminals hardwired to a mainframe (or VAX in some cases) server. All the applications ran on the server. This is just an "upgrade" to 1980s technology, with a nicer user interface. I'm not impressed with the idea, but I am glad someone is after MS. INMHO, competition is good and produces better products for less.
Oh whatever man. Thats the biggest slice of bologna i have ever read. You know nothing about any of these companies. They all have the same goal. The only reason you claim MS knows nothing about this is because your goal in life is to pray they go up in smoke one day. Microsoft reinvents themselves every 5 years. Maybe with bloated software that you hate, non OSS etc, but they come out with something that the masses times 10 buy and implement. Believe me they are in absolutely NO danger from Google or Sun. Sun is barely standing on their own now and Google will soon be dismissed as a major player in anything other than the search engine world. After everyone else hits the dust, no matter what you believe or want, Microsoft will still be standing duking it out. I know people here hate reading that, but its the plain and simple truth. Microsoft has enough resources where in the case of a total loss of their Software vs Google/Sun whoever, they can completely redo/outdo/steal/redo/etc better than the last guy. Its fighting an uphill battle on ice with ice skates.
Sun ported at least the interface portion of StarOffice to Java a while back (they called it Star Portal or something). They could easily bundle the Sun JVM with the Google Toolbar (something they said earlier they would do) then have some kind of Java Web Start thing to download a Java front-end to Star Office which possibly does some processing on the server (although I can't really imagine what, unless Sun wanted to re-invent NeWS with a Java front-end replacing the PostScript portion).
[1] That means made up.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What are the details?
What's it going to be
1) Google directs you to the staroffice website for you to download &
install it locally on your machine & google provides a place for you to
store your documents
OR
2) Google & Sun rebuild StarOffice as a Webservice & then allow you
to edit your document through a webapp & also proves a place for
you to store your documents
Model 1 -> In my opinion, doesn't provide anything new. You
can do it now. Still doesn't solve the problem of people being
locked to Microsoft's format.
Model 2 -> May be good - may solve the problem of people being bound to
the Microsoft document format (i.e. the format isn't important if you have
a service, which is always accessible to everyone to open/edit/print it,
but there is one problem.
50% of the time, documents are edited offline. It's going to be some
years, before people are online all the time. Even when that happens,
what happens if your service goes down & you need to edit the document
coz you have a presentation in 15 minutes.
Plus can a webbased service really provide all the functionality & speed of
a native application?
Can someone explain to me how you access a thick client application from a browser toolbar?
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
I certainly hope so! I have enjoyed using OO.o and hope to see continued development on that project. I would like to see the project focus more on the speed of execution and loading. It's a bit slow even if it is worth the wait. Admittedly MS Office "cheats" by preloading components into the operating system, but then so should OO.o. Under Windows, I understand that OO.o already does some preloading, but I'm a Linux user primarily and only use Win+OO.o when I have to move data from Linux to Windows.
Or perhaps the problem I am describing has already been managed and I just haven't caught on -- this wouldn't be the first time. So if anyone could offer answers, I'm listening. I use FC4 and keep it as "stock" as possible by using only updates from the main channels. (I have broken my own rules, recently by subscribing myself to the nr-production channels to gain access to Gnome 2.12 as I have found it to be VASTLY faster and VASTLY more stable than 2.10 or whatever FC4 normally uses.)
Anyway... I digress... I hope Google will participate, then, in the development of OO.o and perhaps even in the Linux Desktop movement!
The day I may use Linux as freely as I am forced to use Windows to play my games, do my work, etc... is coming closer. If Google can make a concerted push to use OpenOffice then the document exchange I need done on a regular basis will be easy between Linux and Windows users.
:)
Now if only Linux was as EASY to use as Windows, and we are there. I'm thinking something Mac OSX-esque for Linux -- Google has the means to deliver it. They don't need to release their own distro of Linux, but they can release a KDE/GNOME competitor that makes using Linux a BREEZE.
I'm just waiting for the day
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
For a business, dropping out $500 isn't much, especially when compared to wages
Actually most medium size businesses that I know off complain about the high cost of Office. However after long negotiations, M$ usually offers much better values on bundles.
It finally starts. The general public might finally understand that there is an alterative to MS.
Two years ago I introduced firefox to a friend who I thought was tech savvy but I was amazed by her reaction, "You're telling me we have a choice of what browser we want to use?" Needless to say I was floored. Non geeks know who Sun is but everybody including Joe "I don't need no dang computer" Sixpack knows who Google is.
Let's forget for a moment that this is Sun's Star Office and not Open Office, and it's Google and web-based.
This maybe the moment when the general public finally realizes that they have a choice what software to run. This can only be good for OSS if marketed/reported in the right way.
Let's not get over zealous bashing M$ and say screaming about Linux, OpenOffice, Gimp & NVU...baby steps...our time will come.
And remember...do no evil!
GMail.
And why is this a big deal? Well sure people could use openoffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office, but people not familiar with opensource software often aren't comfortable with installing it on their harddrive. They think openoffice == shareware. So go and make it availaable on the internet through a google toolbar, you add a whole new level of credibility to the product that "average Joes" will be comfortable with. And we all know the "average Joe" market is the market to win these days. Microsoft has not had any strong competition for their office suite in a decade, so this should prove interesting on the software front.
There was a time when contact management (or, in a more sophisticated form, CRM - customer relationship management) was a desktop app like Act or similar products. Enter SalesForce.com. You could say the same thing about what used to be the province of QuickBooks Pro, or lighter-weight implementations of accounting apps like Solomon or Great Plains, and look instead at NetLedger.com. These are complete migrations from desktop business apps to subscription-based web apps. Likewise with newer versions of tax prep software, etc. This is not new.
That being said, I don't want to have to be internet-connected in order to work on a word processor document.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
With an online spreadsheet and word processor, I won't have to jack around with my flash drive all the time between school, work and home. I can create a document online and save it there; forward it to whomever I need to; and access it whenever without the need for my flash drive intermediary. Big news for me and the other kajillion students out there. I used to shuttle stuff around via email and even a web site I had before. This eliminates machinations like that too.
Also, the city of Houston and state of Indiana both set up a similar system called SimDesk a few years ago.
Has there yet to be a serious google rumor that didn't come true?
>>Not only that, but the name of it isn't OpenOffice, it's OpenOffice.org (which is incredibly stupid-sounding and I wish they'd figure out a way to fix that). If Google and Sun were partnering on this, they'd use StarOffice, not OpenOffice.org.
I completely agree.
What's worse, calling it OpenOffice.org causes other problems when using it. I fired up the MS Access replacement in 2.0 and was propmted if I wanted to register my new database with OpenOffice.org. Do they mean the website? The organizaton? The office suite so the new database can be used globally?
Its a shame that this confusing part was thrown in as I very much like the application.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Here's someone who kept the old Corel Java Office. I remember being cautiously exited about this, but it turned out the computers of that time and the bandwith generaly available were a killer for this app (pun intended)...
Cheers...
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Rich content WEB services such as GOOGLE EARTH, Have never been
possible due to lack of bandwith.
If I wanted to runn a web based app like those darn java applets
that couldn't compete with apps running local.
Now, With Broadband in place(4 Mbps or more), You can access a Full fledged app
from the web and and rival in performance with your locally install MS Crap.
Microsoft bussiness model:
Control the distribution channel (CD's/preinstalled)
Pay for programs, not conent.
Google bussiness model:
Control the distribution channel (WEB-HOSTS-SERVICES/WI-FI)
Pay for conent, not programs.
The clock is ticking
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
I don't buy it. The situation is more complex than that. The web is changing the way software is designed and that's good thing. Thing will not be the same. But it's not an either/or world. There is such a thing as nuance.
My take.
The most interesting scenarios are not entirely Web-based. I think the world is not going to go entirely one way (Web-based) or the other (all PC/device-based). The most interesting scenarios take advantage of the easy deployment and easy updating of Web-based applications and the power of PC-based applications. Note: didn't say Windows but Windows will be a major player for many many years to come IMHO.
There are lots of reasons for this. First, let's talk applications. While web email systems like Hotmail of Gmail are nice, they're clunky compared to a full email client like Outlook. I have played around with some of the Web (Ajax) based "productivity" applications (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_usin g_Ajax/) for links to some examples and they're nice but nothing compared to Office or a good PC-based personal information manager. Try them for yourself to see.
Then there's hardware. PC and mobile device hard ware is getting incredibly cheap. I just bought a duel core 3.3 mhz systemn with 2 gigs of ram and 1 tb of disck space for less than $3,000. There are literally billions of PC's out in the world and will be billions of smart phones out there within a few years. Just this week MIT talked about the $100 PC coming. Why would we want to use all of that processing power for nothing more than driving dumb-terminals with browsers? It just doesn't make sense. Software developers should build applications that use that processing power to do cool things that you can't with purely Web-based applications.
Then there's privacy and security. You can whine all you want about problems with security of Windows or PC's in general but I would guess that most people are still more comfortable having their personal information on their own PC rather than up in the cloud. Do you really want your Quicken files sitting on a server somewhere? I'm sure people will get more comfortable with this over time but I don't think these concerns will ever go away entirely.
Then there's connectivity. Sure, someday connectivity may be 100% pervasive but I don't see that happening any time soon. I live in a very "wired" city and there are still many many places where I can't get WiFi access or even decent wireless phone service. Do I really want to rely completely on Web-based applications for my computing? Not this decade.
The good news is that good software developers will find ways to give users the best of both worlds. Although it will take time to come to fruition, I think amazing applications will come along that have locally running code, combined with code running on servers that deliver experiences we can barely imagine. I saw a demo at Microsoft's PDC last month of an application developed for 3M. The application ran in a browser (IE now but relatively trivial to make it work in other modern browsers) that used Windows Vista's new presentation technology running on the PC and connected out to Web services to deliver an absoltely amazing experience. Because the application used local resources the graphics were incredible - 3D zooming, great navigation, rich graphics etc. But the application also connected up to Web-based resources using Web services to bring data into the application. The application runs
I speculate that pet projects of google employees get pushed as rumors frequently to get their projects more attention and ultimatly to beta.
Microsoft could easily introduce a DHTML bug (unintentionally?) in IE7 that would have broken google's AJAX-based app, and there there goes market share.
Lighting up Bill Gate's competitive brain wiring is the stupidest mistake possible.
Microsoft is good at certain things (they never quit, they only get better, they listen to their customers and they admit when they are wrong are just a few) but what they are REALLY good at is polishing off the competition - and Google just made themselves the competition.
You could argue that MS picked the fight by going into the search business BUT that was like BUSINESS. This is PERSONAL.
I give Google 5-7 years on the outside.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is *laughably guilty*. Check the evidence.