Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Faces Fight Against Online Office Rival
bharatm writes "It's now been a decade since Microsoft bought Hotmail, the web-based e-mail service, for about $400 million. Now Sabeer Bhatia (the site's co-founder) is challenging the software giant's core $20 billion office desktop business. Yesterday Sabeer Bhatia released a free online rival to the bestselling Office suite of applications that will allow users to view, share and edit documents from any computer. 'Designed to help consumers avoid expensive upgrades and to foster collaboration on a secure internet platform, Live Documents matches features found in Office 2007, the most recent version. It will be given away to individuals with 100MB of free data storage space per user. Companies will pay for the system, either hosted remotely or on an internal server, at a discount to Microsoft's licensed technology.'"
Office Live Documents, also not falling under the trademark name exception where he's using the naming in a different field of business? Should be interesting to see what Microsoft's reaction will be here, if they see it's enough of a threat here to have their lawyers attack him. It's not identical by sharing the Windows Live part of Windows Live, but it looks quite intentionally used to sound confusingly similar to a Microsoft product to me.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I'm not surprised a Slashdot summary didn't link to it, but the Times Online? Come now.
Here it is: the Live Documents website.
Not had a look yet, though as I've only found a limited use for Google Documents (the spreadsheet application is great for collaboration) I doubt it will be of any use to me. Open Office is good enough for me, if not everyone.
We Build Beautiful Websites
And how is that different from Google Docs? TFA even mentions that it is getting a "Crowded office", with all these wannabe "online" office applications. This is nothing but a press release, a slashvertisement for a product that did not even proved its worth yet.
Nothing to see here, move along people.
Is here
See for yourself.
"It will be given away to individuals with 100MB of free data storage space per user."
That's pretty cool.
"Companies will pay for the system, either hosted remotely or on an internal server, at a discount to Microsoft's licensed technology."
Okay, that's fucking stupid.
Office apps that REQUIRE a working network/internet connection to function are something that any sane IT department would stay FAR FAR away from. We just don't live in a world where everyone can be connected to the internet all of the time. And even when that day comes, most people would like to have their apps run locally, just in case.
The whole idea of "hosted desktop apps" is dubious (and I'm not even considering the inevitable "rental fees", which is a whole 'nuther scam). It might work for little "one-time use" stuff, but no one would ever rely on them for day-to-day work.
When will people realise that not everything that can be done online should be done online. The article is very light on details one of the big reasons I won't even try Google Apps is because all the files are located on Googles servers and I wouldn't have any control over them. The only detail the article does mention is that this "Live" office has Office 2003's look and feel. OpenOffice is free and has Office 2003's "look" and yet it hasn't replaced MS Office, google apps is free and hasn't replaced MS Office.
Next a small upstart company will be telling us how they have a image manipulation program you uses through the web which will replace photoshop.
Did we really progress from naked MySpace photos to such a disregard to our own privacy that we do not mind putting ALL of our stuff online. Besides server compromises and XSS exploits, the data can be easily disclosed in even a simple civil or divorce court case. At least with your own computer you can delete the files, use encryption or simply throw the hard drive away in the dumpster. Besides, what happens if the provider decides to suddenly discontinue the service or start charging $50/month?
I'm all for competition against MSO, but I fail to see the benefit of online office suites. And especially now that we have two. (and I'm sure MS is working on their version of MSOO (Microsoft Office Online))
The market for such online suites seem rather thin to me.
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this is about as much of a competitor to microsoft as a cockroach is a competitor to me
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
...when it was called ThinkFree Office.
and from the article..Don't want that cheap knockoff now do we..Yes it's better quality because it looks exactly like the most complained about office package due to its usability issues.
Web application developers/promoters seem to think we are living in a utopian society, with free Fiber-like speeds everywhere.
I have news for these people, internet connections go down, servers crash, on-line servers get hacked.
I like having an application on my laptop (portable), where I can access it anywhere. I don't need an internet connection to get at my data. USB keys, CD-ROMS, DVDs provide enough.
Software, as flaky as it is, can also be resold when I am done with it.
Try selling a subscription to some web service that you don't need / no longer want.
Software developers want a market that operates like the cellphone market, pay $20.00/mo, independant of usage of the service. Then add 'micropayments' for 'features'. A sure fire way of ensuring revenue, while nickel and diming consumers to death.
I will always buy standalone software. You can pry my copy of Office/Visual Studio from my cold dead hands, or when I sell it for say 50%. Take that away, and I can use OpenOffice, and good old GCC/G++.
Software wants to be like a utility company. Pay for the service, weather you use it or not. Without any of the regulation, security, or acccountability. Sorry, doesn't work in my book.
Agreed.
These types of things are fine for college & high school kids that have very little confidential information. But when you become an adult, you need control over your information.
There is no way I going to write a letter involving a financial transaction on one of these things. Plus, I have been around long enough to see these things come and go, and my data along with it.
Also, what business is going to use this? If you run a law firm, medical office, or financial business you are legally required NOT to use this stuff.
If you run a business that has trade secrets (i.e. most of them) you would be stupid to use this.
I know MSFT wants to move Office to a web/subscription model and when they do these types of businesses will be out in the cold, or moving to something like OpenOffice (although many don't know of OpenOffice's existence, and OO really just isn't good at making complex documents. I wish it was, it isn't. OO is better than this web crap.)
Seriously, I have been waiting forever for Google Apps to come out in a Google branded server that a business puts behind their firewall.
I think Gmail is fantastic, but I can't put my businesses emails on there because of the confidentiality laws. If I could run the server in my office, problem solved. I know Google is about the data so it wont' happen. But the data is what I am not allowed to give them.
Also, you have the problem of working when not connected.
But I am always connected you say. Yeah, Right! With a web app, I can't work on a plane. I can't work in a non-free WiFi airport (unless I pay $20 for the 3 hours I am stuck there, delayed flights). I can't work at my parents house because they are out in a dial-up location (it isn't a radius from civilization thing but a how land features cause extra line lengths thing) and they are in a cell phone black hole.
This is a probelm as sometimes getting out of Internet range is the only way I keep people from bugging me and getting work done.
to promote online file sharing on real time? and setting permisions? looks like to me very dubious and not nothing like an online aplication suite. i have seen people doing this like this by phone, being just fine to have one file updated and then e-mailed to everyone, and i believe that in this case the most simple thing to do should prevail. anyway, it's a crazy thing to do... i guess, imagine if two users try to change a cell value at the sime time, could be complicated, uh?
I've been using Zoho for a while now. With six kids in school, it has been a fantastic tool for them to write, edit and print documents accessible remotely at a moments notice. So what makes live doc's so much better? Furthermore, from what I've read thus far at live-docs, it seems Zoho has also provided more features... a more thorough overall user experience. Admittedly I have nothing solid for comparison since live-docs is still by invitation only (yes, I did register). Can anyone that currently has full access to live-docs that also uses Zoho regularly care to post a comparison... [or get that invitation approved for me :) ]
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
Live Documents matches features found in Office 2007
They're obviously trying to position this to be "as powerful as Office 2007", but they can't even bring themselves to use THAT much vague puffery?
My personal site also matches features found in Office 2007. It's blue.
At least when Compaq reverse engineered the PC BIOS it was a technological achievement of sorts though that too was, imo, a crap move (even if ultimately legal and brought down prices for consumers).
You want to offer a better and/or lower priced alternative; fine. Bragging about how you're great because you ripped off someone else's stuff, on the other hand, is pretty crass. Yes, MS sucks in a lot of ways, and they are perhaps the biggest biters of all, but it's still not something to brag about.
How about being able to do your work the same way on any computer any where? How about not having to carry a laptop everywhere just for simple crap like writing documents? How about being able to collaborate with other people on any computers anywhere anytime including the same time you are working on the same document yourself? How about not having to pay hundreds of dollars for freakin basic software that, realistically speaking, hasn't advanced remotely enough over at least the last decade to justify all the forced upgrading and incompatibilities. It's freakin text editing, spreadsheeting, and putting slideshows together people. Why would you pay hundersds of dollars for software that only works on one computer just to do this stuff?
InstaColl said that it was not infringing copyright because of a legal ruling that concluded that it was not possible to patent the "look and feel" of a computer interface.
Aren't copyright law and patent law two completely different things? The article makes it sound as if the guys who spent millions of dollars developing this thing didn't realise that.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet. Google has provided a sound alternative to Office 2007. Yes it's in its infancy, whereas Office has had decades to grow. I wonder how docs will look like in 15 years.
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
Poking around on those web pages, it gets to:
Getting Started with Live Documents
Sign Up
Before you get started you'll need to set up your account. It just takes a few seconds: sign up here for an invitation to our technology preview.
Then:
Sign up to get invited
Live Documents is currently available in a technology preview mode on an on-invitation basis. To request an invite to this private beta, please sign up below.
I just can't see myself using an online system for my Word Processing or other office needs. Once my private data is off of my system, who knows who is looking at it.
Unless it was -1 delusional
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It's not open source, it is a private company. If by some act of god this did take off, remind me again what's stopping MS from just buying them up?
This doesn't jive with their plugin download page which demands Windows.
I suspect that the Linux and Mac stuff is a phase two thing.
Why is this story worthy of a post on Slashdot? So someone has come up with yet another MS Office competitor. Google already has Internet-accessed office apps. Others do as well. And there have been Office clones, free and otherwise, for over a decade. What makes this one so special? Was it that slow in the Slashdot bullpen today?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Conveniently forgetting it's the only Office suite you can buy in a retail store...
Amazon Best Sellers in Office Suites
1 MS Office Home and Student 2007
2 MS Office Home and Student 2004 [OSX]
8 MS Office Home and Student 2008 {OSX]
13 Word Perfect X3 Office
15 OpenOffice.org 2.2 [79 cents on CD-ROM]
16 Word Perfect X3 Office Home
34 Star Office 8
MS Office 2007 holds seven of the top 25 slots in Office Suites.
iWork 2008 is #11 in software sales overall. OSX Leopard #1. MS Office Home #2 [11 PM Nov 22]
The key seller for Office, in business, is Word + Excel and Outlook + Exchange. The key seller for Excel, is VBA. Whether you like it or not, the vast majority of businesses with more than a few people use Excel and VBA Macros. The company I work at provides a large scale financial solution to people and we have hundreds of client businesses. All of them use VBA Macros. Sadly, I spend a large amount of each day modifying them to suit their latest requests.
Does Google Apps offer VBA or something like it? Does Live Documents? Does OpenOffice? I'm pretty sure they don't (but admit to being too lazy to fact check this).
So it's game-over for businesses. Have fun with the Mums and Dads and teenagers but they're never going to pay you more than a few peanuts. Until you can match VBA in applications, MSO wins.
So let me get this right - Firstly, 2000 Microsoft programmers spend 3 years developing MS Office, and then lock it up with some sort of secret code, and proceed to make money selling it as a desktop application.
.. comparing ciphers, testing hypothesis, following hunches, kidnapping and interrogating suspects who may have had some involvement with the original Microsoft effort.
.. this battle of wits and minds .. they make a breakthrough ! Excitedly, they gather together at 3am after an exhausting marathon code breaking session. Behind them the blackboard is covered in equations, diagrams, the chalk dust of many previous failures and deadends. Today's ciphers are layed out on a large table, aligned correctly, and checked and double checked once more. And then they place the ciphers one on top of another and roll the result into a single, extremely complex equation that just might work this time.
.. the words :
.. the world may now be theirs, but there is still remains work to do. Armed now with the secret code word to Microsoft Office, they skillfully manipulate the code word, shuffling and re-ordering the code word ever so slightly - like cyber Gods adjusting the DNA of a dangerous new species - until they are done.
.. because it gives the inside view on how IT really is .. this tense, frustrating, demanding, clandestine and often dangerous occupation that we geeks take for granted. Its time for the common man in the street to give us the fear and respect that we so obviously deserve. We are programmers - We crack codes ! Be afraid - Be very afraid.
After that, 32 software engineers in India put in many hard hours over a 4 year period to "crack the code" of MS Office. Thats like 4 years of tedious mathematical analysis
After 4 years of this seemingly endless and fruitless intellectual struggle
This new equation is fed into the computer banks and the hard disks begin whirring away for one more time.
Some hours later, as the sun is well on its journey into the sky, the hard drives stop whirring. Everyone in the team gathers around the green glow of the monitor in the dead silence, the sweat glistening on their faces drawn tight with exhaustion and tension. After a moment that lasts a lifetime
C O D E - C R A C K E D
appear in capitals on the monitor, and the dusty old dot matrix printer begins printing out the secret Microsoft Office code word. But admist the jubilation, the computer hackers remain calm
Barely hours after breaking the secret code, the new modified code word is overlaid onto Microsoft Office and fed back into the computer. The hard drives whirr noisily one more time, and then the result appears on the screen. They now have Microsoft Office working as an online application !!!
Im glad that the times newspaper in the UK decided to print this story
...does the live-docs version of XL have the Flight Simulator?
He was lucky with Hotmail to have had a very creative and clueful partner. There's nothing original with this site and this will fail along with Sabeer's other companies in his post-Hotmail days. I've very happy to not have to deal with Sabeer's ego on a daily basis anymore.
Have you seen the Live Documents site? I assume that some of that $400 million for Hotmail was spent on legal consultation for this Live Documents baby. I'm no lawyer, and I certainly wouldn't be throwing around registered trademarks without some seriously qualified legal advice the way it's happening on this site. Add to this the claim (to be seen) that Live Documents will mimic the MS Office interface and it's clear that Mr. Bhatia is desperately waving his arms in the general direction of MS and saying either (a)"Hey, screw you and your $400 office suite", or (b)"Hey, look, I just saved you a lot of work designing your online office suite". Or possibly (c)both.
And power to him. As was pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, MS helped lay the legal foundation for the borrowed interface; let them lie in the bed they've made.
Personally I have no love for Google's version of the online office. I've used their spreadsheets for collaboration and found them painfully slow and inferior to the good old-fashioned local office suite. I'll try Live Documents just out of curiosity, but even if it's quick and great and functional, unless it's functional beyond my wildest dreams I just don't see any compelling reason to trust my files with a third party. And don't talk to me about the money I can save in licensing fees -- most slashdotters already have some great workaround to that problem already figured out.
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
1) Most documents I have to work on are at work. I have no need to go somewhere else to work on these documents.
2) At work I already have a computer with all the tools I need.
3) Collaboration sounds nice, but so far I have yet to find the instance where I have to do that, at the same time (except for our timesheets, but that works in Excel out of the box already. (you can set an excel sheet to 'share with others', and they can edit the same document at the same time as you.)
4) TANSTAAFL. Right now it's free, but you still pay in some other way. I'm sure there will be ads there, and from there it's a small step to inserting ads inside your documents. (As you often have with shareware applications) Unless you pay x amount to get the 'premium' package.
So the only reason that might apply to me is the collaboration tools. And that's not enough. Sure it's nice to work on documents from home as well as from work, but why? And it also means that your documents aren't stored on drive space that you own. Who knows what happens to them when you leave it there. Is it secure? I don't know. I wouldn't store sensitive data on those services.
I'm much more interested in decent version control, but then not online but inside the 'offline' office tools. (preferably in OOo, that way I have a hook to sell that office suite to my superiors)
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What I like about the macro code in OO is that you learn ONE variant. Not 3 (VBA Excel, Word or Powerpoint), just ONE. And, of course, you end up with multi platform support, but it will be a while before people realise that from using OO it is but a short step to Linux - IMHO, Outlook is about the last claw MS has on business and end users because mobile phone suppliers still insist on using it as the sole targer for synchronisation.
The moment some Open Source heda comes up with a decent alternative for that it's curtains for MS. And no, Evolution is still too far off to serve as a decent replacement.
Insert
Mod parent up to insightful.
He's correct, the best case scenario saved at most 25 cents per document. Its highly unlikely that purchasing site licenses for Word would have amounted to that much over 7 years. And I say Word on purpose. Its highly unlikely that any home-grown web-based spreadsheet solution can match the analytical functions that Excel has built in (Google doesn't do it, and lets not even get started with PowerPoint and Access). So basically it sounds like they've spent a heck of money developing a system that would have cost far less than purchasing Office itself, in order to save far less money that it would have cost to purchase Word over the last 7 years.
Live Documents matches features found in Office 2007, the most recent version. It will be given away to individuals with 100MB of free data storage space per user.
Looks like Thinkfree.com gives away 1gb of free online space. Maybe we'll see the same kind of competition that happened when Gmail opened with 1GB of space, now everyone has multi-GB (or unlimited) free storage available.
Hurray for competition!
Since I had no mod point to take you from +3 Insightful to +4, I thought I'd post.
I've been re-watching ST:TOS lately & something that has bugged me is that we thought there would only be one computer on the Enterprise hundreds of years in the future & that everything would go through it. Then in TNG, everything had a computer of some sort in it.
You may have a point & possibly we're only seeing the second of many pendulum swings. I realize StarTrek is fiction, but Roddenberry may have been on to something.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
You can buy a version of Word where you pay per document? I don't keep up on pricing, but that's quite the revolution for MS. When we buy Word, we have to pay per user - and we have a lot of users, many of whom are not employees or who do very few documents. I'm also counting in there drastically lower support costs, which we've seen.
And no, we didn't actually spend that long in development (one developer, me, times about 3 months at the start) and no, it doesn't take people long to train - because the thing only has the 15 or so functions that our users should be using, and where appropriate they work the same way they do in other word processors. To be sure, this started out as an experiment - but it's an experiment that paid off. Our alternative options at the time (2001/2002'ish I think) were not good, and our tests with them didn't make happy users.
And, to be clear, I never set out to say this is the right solution for everyone - and likely less so now in 2007. And, of course, if your Word users are using lots of complicated functions, you'd be crazy to try to re-implement them all. I was countering the idea that an online word processor is infeasible in general.
Also, to be clear, I am not inexperienced with other alternatives. A few of our users need spreadsheets, so a couple years ago we looked into an OpenOffice based content management system. We got it working for the spreadsheets and got most of the application ties working, and as a test we tried to see whether the word processing users wanted to use it too. They didn't like it - too complicated, and if they wanted to use it at home they had to install stuff. And, for us, if we wanted to do customization, we had to delve deep into a fairly complicated project. It's still only used for a few spreadsheets, and the project was, on balance, a waste of time (which we're OK with - we may use it more later).
We also support another client that uses a forms based app with ties to Word (from around 1998). It works OK for the most part, but there's fairly often some problem and the breaks between apps make the UI fairly hokey. A month ago, they installed a Server 2003 update on a neglected server, untested, and everything died. Some "Word cannot open " error. Had to run a fix on every computer, and then fix some of the templates - lost a half day of work. Nothing major, but something that happens much less frequently for the online one (though, to be fair, Vista gave us some curveballs). I've spent a lot of time diggling with weird errors in Word templates, and Googling about odd problems.
In general, I get tired of the term "Not Invented Here". I hear it fairly often, especially when we get a new employee who's not used to actually writing software. I understand the idea that re-using tested software is often better than rolling your own, but I know a lot of developers who seem scared of developing anything. It's always "piece together 6 well tested, general purpose tools". We've had a few guys like that over the years, and their legacy usually lives on in the bad parts of the software, and the parts that don't work when we make a new app server because they require 12 packages installed to do simple crap (and where did we put the license key for this one? can we still download the old version of that one?).
If you have a manageably sized, specific need, quite often a homegrown solution will better meet your needs and will be easier to maintain for those needs going forward. Our company outpaces our industry fairly handily on technology, despite spending about the same. It's because we don't blindly write off options because they don't match some rule of thumb.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I replied to the other guy, but I'll reply to a specific point in yours as well. We didn't develop this to save money on Word. We developed it so that we could have a central document store that worked, that was easy to use for our purposes, and that we could control and customize.
:)
Initially, the online one was an experiment. We needed to switch to something, because the legacy system (involving Word 95 documents and batch updates from the branches) wasn't going to cut it going forward. The templates relied heavily on Word 95 style macros (which weren't supported in later versions), but Word 2000 had much better online support and we couldn't just let ourselves be trapped with an old version. Anyways, we tried a few content management setups - but they were all dead ends.
We rejected them not because of cost, but because they were less reliable and usable than our homegrown one (which, again, was developed at very low cost - and pretty much as an experiment). The savings since, which are real, on licenses and support are the gravy. You're right - switching to a bad solution to save a few hundred thousand wouldn't have made any sense. But that's not what we did.
Also, it's hard to overestimate the long-term cost of giving an employee a copy of Access
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
So wait, your system isn't a word processor but rather a home-brew sharepoint portal? In that case, what are you using for the actual "word processing" side of things?
It's both: a document management system and a simple in-browser word processor. I'm hazy on history - it's a while back now - but I think Sharepoint came into being fairly soon after we launched.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Online word processors written largely in javascript taking on Microsoft word and the rest of the office suite? Anyone who takes that idea seriously needs to get their head screwed on straight.
Google already has such a service, as do several other companies. I see no evidence that they have or ever could make the slightest dent in Microsoft's office sales.
Lol.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...