Google Pleased With ISO OOXML Decision

yogi writes "In a blog post from this Friday past, Google welcomed the ISO decision not to fasttrack OOXML. They also (once again) voiced their public support for the ODF standard. 'Technical standards should be arrived at transparently, openly, and based on technical merit. Google is committed to helping the standards community remain true to this ideal and maintain their independence from any commercial pressure ... Google supports one open document format and calls on industry participants to collaboratively work on ODF. With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass onto future generations.'"

Comments

Of course.

[jeevesbond]

With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass onto future generations.

Which is of course what Microsoft must stop at all costs. Also worth remembering is that were the shoe on the other foot, and Google had the business lockin and office suite monopoly Microsoft enjoy, they'd probably protect their proprietary formats at all costs too. So whilst Google's opinion may be aligned with most people here, do remember that they're a company whose sole aim is profit.

This looks like a fortuitous PR stunt to me, I don't doubt that Google like ODF now but we shouldn't forget that Microsoft have been known to be open when they lack market share too.

Re:Of course.

[daeg]

They are two separate business interests, really. Google's interest is in being able to search and index content. I'm sure they'd love a standard document format that isn't proprietary like their indexing of .DOC files.

Microsoft could embrace ODF. They could integrate it with Microsoft Office, eliminate .DOC, and produce the best ODF tools in the market and maintain their dominance, even in Government. Open Office, while great for the breadth of its tools, is a complicated beast and can be overwhelming for general office staff.

Instead, Microsoft plays these games, giving OpenOffice and others valuable time to play catch up while more and more governments around the world pull back away from the monstrosity Microsoft has created.

As an example of a company with proprietary software doing well with open standards, look at Adobe and the PDF standard. You can download everything about the standard from Adobe's website. There are competing readers (for Windows and other platforms), other PDF tools galore, but people still turn to Adobe products. We still rely on Distiller. We still rely on (now) Live Cycle. When you want crisp viewing of PDFs with good options, you use Adobe Reader (Foxit and others are catching up). Even Microsoft has benefited (Export to PDF in Office 2007 - FINALLY after over a decade without it).

Re:Of course.

[cheater512]

Yeah but Google provides all their stuff for free with ads.
Microsoft charges for the same thing.

Its a completely different business model.
Google doesnt have to screw over customers to make money.

IMHO they wont venture to the dark side of the force.

Re:Of course.

[king-manic]

Microsoft could embrace ODF. They could integrate it with Microsoft Office, eliminate .DOC, and produce the best ODF tools in the market and maintain their dominance, even in Government. Open Office, while great for the breadth of its tools, is a complicated beast and can be overwhelming for general office staff.

From past experience MS realize that fair competition isn't good for the ones competing. Google isn't really competing in the same way as the profit off of something independent of what office suit you use. Just as MS previously didn't care which Windows loaded PC you bought. While MS has a vested interest which office suite you use now. So having a open standard gives other companies a way in to crowd into MS's business model.

Re:Of course.

[Sj0]

Thought experiment time!

Let's say you make the best strawberry jam in the world. In one city, the government is run by assholes, and so everyone has to mix in a bit of mud.

Even with the mud, you've still got the best strawberry jam in the world. It's the best the people of that city can get because of the assholes in government.

If you believe preference utilitarianism, where you want to make the most people happy, then it's obvious which choice is more moral; The people of China are going to be persecuted by unjust laws whether they've got a Chinese version of Google or not. Google is still the best product available, and I'm sure people are made happier through the fact that they can use it.

Now, you could say that Google could be propping up an immoral regime that oppresses it's own people, but it's unlikely that refusing to open Google.cn would suddenly make the communists see the error of their ways.

Simple win. Happy Chinese people vs. shallow meaningless victory

Re:Of course.

[nospam007]

Its a completely different business model.
Google doesnt have to screw over customers to make money.
--
We are not their customers, the advertising companies are.
We are Google's stock.

Re:Of course.

[Jaxoreth]

Microsoft could embrace ODF. They could integrate it with Microsoft Office, eliminate .DOC, and produce the best ODF tools in the market and maintain their dominance, even in Government.

Microsoft simply cannot produce the best tools in the market. They lack the necessary design skill and development practices (at least within the Office business).

Open Office, while great for the breadth of its tools, is a complicated beast and can be overwhelming for general office staff.

Have you seen what it's intended to replace?

Re:Of course.

[Aceticon]

Microsoft could embrace ODF. They could integrate it with Microsoft Office, eliminate .DOC, and produce the best ODF tools in the market and maintain their dominance, even in Government. Open Office, while great for the breadth of its tools, is a complicated beast and can be overwhelming for general office staff.

One of the strongest reasons for the continued market share of MS Office is the network effects that come from the majority of people using the MS Office. It works like this:

• If a person or a company need to send a document to another person or company, they need to do it in such a way that the other side can at least read it and maybe even edit it.
• Since most senders have MS Office and they expect most recievers also have it, they will likelly send the document in Word Doc format. If the receiver doesn't have MS Office, and because of the problems that other text editors have in fully supporting that format, he now has a strong incentive to get MS Office.
• Conversely, a sender which does not have MS Office and sends a document in a format other than Word Doc, is likelly to be faced by a receiver which cannot read that document since they have MS Office and it doesn't support most other widespread document formats. The sender thus has an incentive to get MS Office.
• Lastly, a sender which does not have MS Office and tries to send a document in Word Doc format, is likelly to have the document not being fully compatible with MS Office, again due to the problems that other text editors have in fully supporting that format, and thus be displayed incorrectly in the reciver's machine. Again the sender thus has an incentive to get MS Office.

To maintain this virtuous circle (virtuous for MS, others might think of it as vicious), two factors need to be kept in place

• The most widely used format (at the moment, Word Doc format) can only be properly read and written by MS Word
• The most widely used document edition application (at the moment, MS Word) does not fully support any other competing document format.

To maintain this MS needs to:

• Try and avoid the emergence of another widely used document format.
• Make it impossible for other word edition applications to properly support Word Doc format.
• Do not properly support other widespread document formats in MS Word.

I believe we all can find examples of all the above actions.

Google vs. Microsoft

[markdavis]

"With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass onto future generations.'"

EXACTLY what Microsoft does NOT want. I said it before, I will say it again... even if Microsoft does concede and add ODF support in MS-Office, one can almost bet it will be "broken" and Microsoft's formats will mysteriously work "better". The saga continues...

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[turing_m]

Either that or they just embrace the ODF spec, extend it in proprietary ways that won't work in other office suites, and then extinguish it. That way MS Office will read everything but still produce documents that only work properly in Office.

Re:one flew over the cuckoos nest

[MightyMartian]

It wouldn't under normal circumstances, but there are a growing number of organizations (in particular various governments) who are demanding open document formats to protect valuable data from being stored in proprietary formats that might, at some point the future, become very difficult to access. In other words, in 2050 AD, the state of Massachusetts doesn't want to maintain an old copy of Windows 98 running Office 95, or have to run one virtualized on new hardware (if you can find an old Pentium emulator around) just so it can open old, archived documents. With a *useful* open document format, it's at least feasible that you could get your programmers or hire programmers to write software to extract or translate the data.

This is the importance to Microsoft of getting OOXML turned into an ISO standard. That way it can have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand they can declare to Massachusetts or any other government or organization demanding an open file format that they have this keen ISO standard, all the while having a format with so many patent-encumbered and proprietary hooks that no one but Microsoft could ever hope to write a program that could read or write it.

One only has to look at how incredibly important it is to Microsoft to get this enormous, crappy and completely unimplementable standard through ISO by the sheer efforts and willingness to risk public exposure to buy votes. If they can't get this past the ISO post, then the long-term viability of their business model is severely compromised.

Re:one flew over the cuckoos nest

[MightyMartian]

ODF is not a perfect standard. I don't believe there is such a thing as a perfect document standard. But what ODF is not is patent encumbered or encumbered by references to proprietary functionality.

Simply put, a reasonably competent programmer could implement ODF from the documentation. However, to implement OOXML would require both licensing to take care of any patent issues and access to internal Microsoft formats.

Re:one flew over the cuckoos nest

[SL Baur]

I still cannot understand how microsoft which I do believe has a considerable amount of self interest is creating obstacles primarily for themselves. You're missing a big point. So long as it's a problem that only Microsoft can fix and bill people for, it's in Microsoft's best interest to do it that way.

I would love a clear explanation about why one standard is better than the other. <Monty-Python>That's a fascinating question and I'd like to answer it in two ways if I may ... the first in my normal voice and the second in a silly, high-pitched whine</Monty-Python> Oh wait ...

Seriously, consider troff as a case example, a program which Brian Kernighan once called "50000 lines of uncommented unreadable C code written by the late Joe Osana" (I've tried to remember where I first read that, but haven't found it again and it's true enough as a reading of the source reveals).

troff wasn't exactly open source as we now define the term, but the markup language specification was fully documented. As a result, it was reimplemented in a variety of forms including the GPLed groff and it is still possible to make hardcopy of troff documents written decades ago.

Similarly, the TiVoized TeX (you are not allowed to make willy-nilly changes and redistribute them, but it's still open source), will also live forever.

Even more so than open source, an open specification is something that can never ever be taken away from you and it will live in the form of working code that implements it for as long as it is useful.

Contrast this with the OOXML "standard" which includes XML tags such as format this paragraph like Microsoft Word-95 (without explanation as to what that means) or use word spacing like Microsoft Word-97 for the Apple Macintosh (also without explanation as to what that means), etc.

Can anyone name a single proprietary counterexample that has lived at least as long as troff (over 30 years)? Open standards work and we have the track record to prove it.

If you are still confused ... since this is slashdot, I'll try a car analogy. A closed standard means you have to return your car to the factory in which it was made to have it serviced - a single point of failure and if the factory refuses to work on your particular car and says you must buy a new one instead, that is what you will have to do. An open standard means you can drive down the street and choose the nearest mechanic to work on your car. Fortunately, cars have open standards and the standard is only a Chilton's guide away http://www.chiltonsonline.com/

Re:OOXML... what's the point?

[nstlgc]

So you explicitly state you used new features from 2007 ("the new fancy ones") and then you're surprised that all your slides are no longer 2003-compatible? Wow.

Re:one flew over the cuckoos nest

[MightyMartian]

Um, IBM just announced that they were going to start contributing to OpenOffice, and apparently are putting out their own ODF-compatible office suite based on OpenOffice. The industry is very much interested in ODF, because it represents for their development teams a fully accessible standard, and means the chance of not being beholden to Microsoft.

If ODF is adopted in a large way, then Microsoft would likely adopt it, then either break it (as they did with Kerberos) or put in lots of vendor-specific extensions to assure that only Microsoft products could deal with it (in short turn ODF in the new DOC). The open question is what would those organizations that are demanding an open standard do. I guess it depends on how savvey they are, on whether Microsoft can continue to throw its weight around, etc. But the fact is that ODF, though still maturing, represents the single biggest threat to Microsoft's business model in a decade, and they are putting a substantial amount of political effort into getting their own unworkable standard in place.