ODF Vs. OOXML File Counts On the Web

mrcgran writes "In eight months since Office 2007 was released to the general public (10 months since release to enterprise customers), there are fewer than 2,000 of these office documents posted on the Web. In the last three months, 13,400 more ODF documents have been added to the Web, with only 1,329 OOXML documents added. It would be hard for the Microsoft camp to spin ten times as many ODF documents added as OOXML documents, especially since 34% of those new documents were added on Microsoft.com. That isn't what I would call good traction for Microsoft's overwhelmingly dominant office suite."

Comments

Microsoft is competing with itself

[Shados]

Thats the main issue. I have Office 2007, and had it for a while. I almost always save in normal DOC for people still using Office 2003...

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[hairpinred]

I personally have found that when trying to open old DOC format files that OpenOffice.org does a much better job than the latest version of Word does.

Especially if you have any legacy Word 1.0 or 2.0 documents that can't be upgraded to the latest format for contractual reasons - Office 2007 will not open those files correctly, and those files are officially unsupported by Microsoft.

I'm surprised that more people don't just use .ODF, it's a published, open standard that is as trivial to write a parser for as it is to just unzip the file and look at the XML directly...

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Bluesman]

I think this is exactly right, and one of the most interesting aspects of Microsoft's business.

Their whole business is dependent on being the popular standard. But by definition, a standard can't be a moving target, so it has to change very slowly or people will stick with "the old version that everyone has."

This puts Microsoft between a rock and a hard place, since they'll lose the market if they make too drastic a change, and they'll also lose the market if they don't change at all, and allow other implementations to catch up.

It's a high-wire balancing act, and while they're very good at it, they're going to slip eventually.

All of you people worried about Microsoft as a monopoly are freaking out over nothing. In the long term, what they're doing with Windows and Office is not sustainable.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Volante3192]

Especially if you have any legacy Word 1.0 or 2.0 documents that can't be upgraded to the latest format for contractual reasons

Offtopic, but I'm just too curious... Would it be possible to explain why these can't be migrated to a newer format? I'd think that'd be dangerously unwise.

I'm surprised that more people don't just use .ODF, it's a published, open standard that is as trivial to write a parser for as it is to just unzip the file and look at the XML directly...

Cause we all know how much a success that is; just look at HTML!

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[dmpyron]

Of course it's about "standards". Even Microsoft "standards". I've had two professional associations I belong to say that they won't accept anything in WTF the 2007 format is. This is for the benefit of both the office staff and also the referees. I'm still running 2000. That's what the ACM (you know, the computer people) require. The IEEE recommends 2000 but will also accept 2003. The ISSA hasn't taken an official stand, yet. But everything coming out of them is 2000.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[phoenixwade]

Especially if you have any legacy Word 1.0 or 2.0 documents that can't be upgraded to the latest format for contractual reasons
Offtopic, but I'm just too curious... Would it be possible to explain why these can't be migrated to a newer format? I'd think that'd be dangerously unwise. I'm not sure of the parent poster, but we have some electronic documents that are archived from 10 years ago that can't be updated and then re-archived, they must match the printed documents that they produced. We can, and do, convert to a new(er) format when updating a document to be submitted and published now, and to allow those documents to be searched, but the ability to open documents from years ago is critical for one of our customers. We got the job because we were willing to dedicate a system to retrieve those documents in the original format.

My recommendation was to handle those archives very differently. This client has a decision maker who knows what he wants, and dictates that it is either done that way, or he'll find someone else to do it. So we do it that way, and every year, I make a case for becoming more current, and every year, the answer is no. I don't mind, though, he's paying for the service, and other than this little bit of fear, he's really easy to work with, I've certainly had far more progressive clients that were far more of a PITA.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[geekboybt]

Like, oh, I don't know... ribbons?! That's it! Ribbons! ...crap.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[MightyMartian]

And that's the crucial thing, at least at the moment. A whole helluva lot of businesses are holding off on Office 2007, so that even those folks that do upgrade are setting Office to save in the older format to guarantee compatibility. Any advantages to the OOXML file format (and quite frankly, from an operational point of view, I don't think there are) are meaningless if everyone is still saving their documents and spreadsheets in the 2000/XP/2003 format.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[ozmanjusri]

They just have to make a better, more intuitive, easy to use word processor.

MOOXML isn't about competing with other office suites. It's about preventing competition from thousands of specialised document creation tools.

If ODF becomes ubiquitous, it will be easy for specialised tools to create documents which can then be opened/parsed by the office suite or by other tools (ie databases, document managers, aggregators etc) in the chain. Instead of having a few easy targets to embrace, extend..., Microsoft will have to contend with a whole ecosystem of document tools.

Of course, having that flexibility will be an immense improvement for businesses and other computer users, but less profit for Microsoft means it must be fought with all the tools their monopoly position can muster.

Is a web count really the best metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of what I and the various people and businesses I've known use this sort of document format for, is the sort of thing that should never in a million years be put out on the web in the first place. If you can count what formats are clogging up large intranets, meybe you've got a clearer picture.

Yeah, but

[everphilski]

what about the number of .doc files generated in the same timeframe? :)

public consumption

[snilloc]

Anything shared for public consumption would use the more compatible .doc

When standards were determined not by.....

[3seas]

....committee but rather by popular use.....

ODF is apparently 10 times more a standard than OOXML.

And I bet its all because its easier to spell.

Re:When standards were determined not by.....

[Anonymous Coward]

And I bet its all because its easier to spell.

I tried open office once and it was buggy and crashed a lot. So why should I use the Open Office XML format, when I can use the trusted Office Document Format?

And...so?

[DragonWriter]

In eight months since Office 2007 was released to the general public (10 months since release to enterprise customers), there are fewer than 2,000 of these office documents posted on the Web.

Probably because most people creating documents with Office 2007 for the web are either:
1) Converting them to PDF or XPS if they aren't meant to be edited, or
2) Converting them to Office 97-2003 format if they are meant to be edited, since the majority of the Microsoft Office-using audience will be using older versions of the office suite.

I don't think counting documents on the web is particularly a useful way to try to measure the dominance of office suites or their associated file formats. Its, perhaps, an easy measure, but not a meaningful one.

Re:And...so?

[DragonWriter]

So what you are saying is that OOXML has such poor support that people who use it feel compelled to save it in a more universal forma, while ODF is sufficiently universal that people feel comfortable posting it as is.

No, what I'm saying is that people using Office 2007 to post documents on the Web (hardly its primary use) are usually targetting an audience where Office 97-2003 is a more useful interchange format (since lots of people have older versions of Office), while people posting ODF documents on the web are mostly targetting people who are likely to have an ODF software.

That doesn't mean that "ODF is sufficiently universal" for anything; I suspect that if you looked at where those specific ODF documents are offered they would be:
1) Sites targetting specific narrow communities where Microsoft Office is not likely to be used (i.e., Linux users), or
2) Sites where ODF is one of several formats offered, and one of the others is Microsoft Office 97-2003 format

Anyone who can use OOXML documents (i.e., that has MS Office 2007) can use Office 97-2003 documents equally well, the reverse is not true. Therefore, for public interchange on the Web, Office 97-2003 makes more sense, whether as a sole format, or alongside other formats for people who don't can't use any MS Office format. The same is not true of ODF (while some ODF software handles MS Office 97-2003 formats tolerably well, not all of it does.) So it makes sense that there would be more ODF than Office 2007 on the web, not because ODF is more universal, but because there is no more widespread "fallback" format that is available everywhere ODF is that delivers a substantial subset of ODF functionality.

For other uses that are important in the selection of office suites and associated storage formats, the concerns that influence what is used for public interchange on the web are less relevant. These numbers don't really tell a lot about adoption of ODF vs. OOXML overall, just one specific application where it is unsurprising and says nothing really interesting or useful. And that's even before considering that they include all ODF, but exclude the macro-enable versions of Office 2007 formats.

In any case, your first point, that people save in PDF, is of no real issue.

The real issue it embodies is that "public interchange on the web" isn't a primary focus of editable office document formats.

First, the study, as flawed as it may be, is meant to indicate formats that are universal enough to be predictably exchanged.

So? How important is the portion of the web indexed by Google to that interchange for editable office documents? I would suspect that either portions of the web behind login walls or email are more important avenues for editable office document interchange. Sure, they are harder to measure, and this is easy. But "easy to measure" and "meaningful" aren't the same thing.

Second, the same argument applies to ODF, only more so. I, for instance, seldom post in ODF as OO.org saves to PDF without any complex spyware ridden third party hacks.

The fact that the same argument applies to office suites generally reinforces, rather than undermines, it. Also, the implicit comparison you make is invalid, as MS Office 2007's PDF/XPS plugin is simple, from the user perspective, and comes from Microsoft, not a third party, leaving aside questions of whether it is "spyware-ridden" or a "hack".

Bad metric

[BuR4N]

"That isn't what I would call good traction for Microsoft's overwhelmingly dominant office suite"

Its a worthless metric, how many OOXML have been stored in various internal Sharepoint servers around the world ?

How many Copies of 2007 are truly out there?

[imcclell]

Another question is, what the market share of office 2007 vs an ODF compliant suite? If there's 10 million people with ODF capabilities, and only 1 million with OOXML, doesn't this make sense?

The question is not how many now, but it's how many will there be 5 years from now.

Buffoons...

[Anonymous Coward]

In 12 minutes since this post was released 100% have called this a stupid piece of trash. That is hard to put a spin on.

***captcha is buffoons***

Bollocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why exactly is this tagged "linux"? As though magically all thing FOSS revolve around Linux? Because there being more ODF docs out there, is suddenly a win for Linux, instead of a win for Open Office and FOSS in general?

"That isn't what I would call good traction for Microsoft's overwhelmingly dominant office suite."

The fact that it is an "overwhelmingly dominant office suite" is traction enough. Compare how many users are using any other suite, to the amount running Office. And filecount means something now? By this logic, should be now abandon Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and other audio formats because the number of .mp3s out there completely overshadows them? Should be dismiss Linux and OS X as insignificant sheerly on the basis that there are astronomically more Windows boxen out there? But wait, this is different somehow (because the OSS variant has the numerical advantage) less asinine than, oh, I don't know, basing security on the number of known vulnerabilities that we here on Slashdot love to complain about, isn't it?

And this whole "t would be hard for the Microsoft camp to spin ten times as many ODF documents added as OOXML documents" continually searching for, and boasting any little flaw or inconsistency or what-have-you, no matter how insignificant is really both absurd and childish.

Meanwhile...

[Vellmont]

The REAL document format, PDF has millions of documents on the web.

Do I really care what format people pass around documents they intend to edit, as long as they publish them in what's become the standard format for end-users, i.e. pdf?

The problem, as I see it is people are using ODF/.doc/Microsoft-whatever to often for documents that are really supposed to be just electronically published documents. I.e, not intended to be editied (though obviously you can with the right software).

Apple and Oranges

[in10se]

1. Most people using Office 2007 are still saving their documents in XP/2003 format, so don't confuse the use of the format with the use of the software. In addition, Office 2007 has built-in support for PDF which is a better choice of format for the web.
2. You can't expect major corporations OR small businesses to jump formats overnight (and yes, 7 months is "overnight" when you are talking about major software changes).
3. ODF is output by various free software. More people are willing to download, upload, and play with free software. Geeks are more likely to play with free software. Geeks are more likely to upload documents to the web than normal internet users.
4. Word processing documents (in either format) aren't really meant for the web anyway.

All of these things will lower the number of OOXML documents on the web even if the use of Office 2007 is growing. Any opinions of Microsoft, Linux, Office aside, the comparison in TFA means absolutely nothing.

Re:That isn't what it's measuring

[DragonWriter]

It's measuring the usage of a particular standard.

No, its not. It's measure the usage of a particular standard for interchange on the portion of the web indexed by Google. It doesn't measure what's used for interchange by different paths than the web, by log-in based sites on the web, or what is used for non-interchange (i.e., archive) use.

Since one of the main motives for choosing a standardized format for office documents is future-proof archiving of internal documents, and since it doesn't measure that use at all, its next to worthless as a measure of the use of the standard.

OTOH, unfortunately for Microsoft (not that they don't often benefit from this effect, so its not entirely unfair to Microsoft), its exactly the kind of meaningless-but-precise measure that all too often motivates business decisions.

It's pretty clear that nobody uses OOXML, anyone using MS Office simply continues to use DOC.

That's not clear at all.

What may be clear is that people aren't using OOXML for public interchange on the web, which isn't the same thing.

(Actually, even that's not all that clear, though it may well be true: it appears that the comparison in TFA only measures DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX. It doesn't count the macro-enabled versions of the Office 2007 formats [XLSM, DOCM, and PPTM] which are still, I believe, OOXML.)

Re:The root problem is that there's a difference.

[Vellmont]

The real problem is that there is still a difference.

The more I think about this idea, the more I disagree with it. I think it's a great thing that there's a separation between "presentation" formats, and formats intended to be edited. Why? Because presentation formats should always be the same, always be readable by an older version of software, etc. Editing formats have different needs, like adding new features like layers, links to other documents, etc.

Look at the photoshop format (psd I think) vs jpg for instance. jpg is a format intended to be published, where psd is a flexible format for a designer to do whatever they please with the photo (seperate layers, all that jazz).

In short, editing formats need to evolve and be extremely flexible (and thus incompatible), presentation formats need to stay the same (to a large degree). That doesn't mean you can't edit a publishing format of course.. people edit jpgs all the time. It's just not the design goal of the format.

Office Compatiblity Addon for Old Versions

[antdude]

See here and you can save as Office 2007 formats for old Office versions (as long as they have this pack). I also noticed MS keep them updated through Office Update and I still use Office 2000 SP3.

There's no "ODF" category.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Nor is there a F/OSS category, or a GNU category, as far as I remember when I last tried to submit a story.

Seems to me, "Linux" is as good as anything to describe this.