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.

[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...

Re:Google vs. Microsoft

[Zeinfeld]

However, with ISO standards, isn't there a bit more enforcement of whether or not something adheres to the standard? Don't they actually check that products that say they meet some standard actually meet the standard? Don't they take legal recourse against products that use there standards incorrectly? Maybe I'm just wrong here, but I don't think that ISO has built up such a large reputation for standards by just letting things slide, and having their name slapped on products that don't adhere to the standard.

Completely off base. Wrong on every count.

First off I think you need to understand what ISO is, ISO does not set standards. All ISO does is to recognize standards that have already been set by other standards bodies. So ISO 3103 is actually the same as BS 6008. ISO 9000 is BS 5750 and so on.

The IETF is actually accredited as an ISO member body and in theory RFCs could become ISO standards. They never have and never will as long as ISO charges money for its standards.

There is a compliance program for ISO 9000 but it isn't run by ISO. ISO 9000 consulting is one of the things that Y2K vampires went on to do after Dec 31 1999.

If you want standards go ISO 3103 is pretty critical yet you would be hard pressed to find any US companies that are in compliance. Still, least they don't use salt water any more.

OOXML... what's the point?

[greenguy]

At my day job, my officemate just got Office 2007, which he was pleased as punch about... at first. Then he realized that no one else on any platform, using any software, can read Office 2007 files. He might as well write them in crayon, for what that's worth. He can select an earlier format, but then it saves as read-only.

At this point, my endless nudging about this whole Open Document Format thing is starting to make more sense for him. In fact, he'd be pleased to replace Word. However, he and some other co-workers are power Excel users, and are very reluctant to even consider replacing it.

Can anyone out there make a convincing case that Calc or Gnumeric are just as good as Excel, even for advanced users?

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

[MillionthMonkey]

If you and your friend are so bright you could go into the options and set Office 2007 to save in Office 97-2003 compatability mode.

What part of "he can select an earlier format, but then it saves as read-only" did you not understand? Office 97-2003 compatibility mode has three different meanings in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, and the one in Excel prevents documents with "new features" from being saved to a file that can be edited by a previous version of Excel.

Did I miss something?

[Cassini2]

The fast track process does not officially end until after the next ballot resolution meeting (BRM). According to the ISO press release http://www.iso.org/iso/newsandmedia/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1070, if Microsoft scrapes together enough support at the BRM, then the OOXML standard will be accepted.

On the other hand, if Microsoft doesn't get the support at the BRM, then OOXML is out of the fast track process and referred back to committee for development.