Ballmer Admits Google Apps Are Biting Into MS Office

twitter points out coverage of a discussion between Steve Ballmer and two Gartner analysts in which the Microsoft CEO admits that Google Apps is enjoying an advantage over Office by users who want to share their documents. He points to Office Live as their response to Google, and adds, "Google has the lead, but, if we're good at advertising, we'll compete with them in the consumer business." Whether or not they're good at advertising is still in question, if their recent attempts are any indication. Ballmer also made statements indicating some sort of arrangement with Yahoo! could still be in the works, but Microsoft was quick to step on that idea. Regarding Windows Vista, he said Microsoft was prepared for people to skip it altogether, and that Microsoft would be "ready" when it was time to deploy Windows 7.

Comments

Google Apps is pretty useful

[yppiz]

I started a company last year, and I could have chosen to either: a) set up a Windows Server and buy multiple Office licenses, or b) sign up for Google Docs.

Docs has worked out really well for us.

Re:Well, here we go

[Darkness404]

If you ask me, Windows 7 looks a lot like a response to Linux on the desktop. Now's the time for OSS developers to step up to plate and deliver a solution that will make Windows 7 look like child's play. I'm game.

Technologically, Linux and OS X are light years ahead of Windows, and will be by Windows 7. The problem is, some people will never use Linux unless it has a uniform UI (which, have you ever seen Windows?, Linux's UI is more uniform than even all of MS's products.) and other will not move to Linux unless *insert specialty application or game* is available on Linux. Still, the vast majority of users will use whatever is on their computer, be it Linux, Vista, XP, OS X, BSD, etc.

This is a not true

[tkrotchko]

I was there at the talk. What Ballmer said (and I'm paraphrasing) is that Google Apps have no audience; user growth plateaued months ago and that in their (MS's) own studies almost all college students buy MS Office and use it. He said the only time students are using Google Apps is when they need to collaborate on projects but he talked about how MS is working to beef up their own collaboration tools in Office 2007/08.

Really guys, this is reaching.

Ballmer is a good entertaining speaker, and Gartner analysts are not going to outfox the guy.

MS Office file formats are becoming the odd ones

[gelfling]

In my firm, which is a Fortune 50 company, we're actively abandoning MS Office for our own modification of Open Office. In fact OO3 does everything better - it handles all the problems of earlier versions like embedded OLE objects, it handles all our all 'legacy' junk AND it handles all of the various MS Office 2007 file formats which, as everyone knows were invented JUST to force people to lock in and upgrade. In fact all those Office 2007 formats are becoming the weird occasional exception for us as we move to ODF and such. Mostly we use MS Office 2007 formats as a required translation step from DOC to ODF since OO3 handles it that way by default: DOC > DOCX > ODF for instance.

So being weird and unique, Balmer, we don't care. Soon MS Office will be just another legacy format we keep around for archival purposes like Lotus Wordpro, 123, AmiPro and the like. Good luck with that, Steve.

Re:Well, here we go

[techno-vampire]

You ask some good questions and make some good points. However, I can tell you one place where Linux (and, AFAIK FreeBSD) are light years ahead of anything from Microsoft and have been for years: Linux partitions don't need regular defragging. They can go for years without needing one and, unless they're over 80% full or so and have large files that are constantly changing they probably never will. This isn't because the file system itself is better, but because Linux doesn't jam the files one right next to the other like Windows does; it leaves room between them for growth. If MS really wanted to "embrace and extend," they'd rewrite the part of the OS that decides where files go to be more like the Linux model and do away with defrag altogether.

Re:Well, here we go

[hairyfeet]

Hell,I'll probably get flamed to negative 1000 for this,but what the hey,I've got Karma to burn. If you want to know how to get Joe and Jane home user(along with Sam SMB) I'll be happy to tell you. As someone who has been working in PC repair more years than I care to count,as well as someone who tried to sell Linux boxes and watched them rot on the shelves,I can happily tell you the problems that need fixing. Here they are-

1.-Make an ndiswrapper for those damned Lexmark all in one printers! Surely it can't be anymore difficult than those funky wireless "cards" which are nothing but a firmware chip and Windows. Those Lexmarks ain't changed in ages and are calling Windows GDI for everything so surely someone who can code ought to be able to figure that one out. But WAY too many of the home users(probably 85-95% here) have one of those damned printers. They are cheap,make good pictures,and do what they want it to do,so they WON'T go buy a $150 printer just to use a new and strange OS.
2.-Games. Even those girls that say "Eeew,games are stupid and I can't see why you waste you time with those!" actually have at least one game they play(for some reason it is almost always AoE ! or II. I swear it is like catnip to females). While Wine is nice in theory,it is just too damned complex for Joe and Jane. It needs to work when you stick a disc in,ala "clicky clicky,next next next". If they can stick their Windows game disc and go Clicky Clicky,then they are happy campers. Which brings me to number three-
3.-WalMart and Best Buy. Joe and Jane don't want to find their software by looking through some repo and trying to figure out what they want by some description that may be over their heads,they want to look at pretty pictures with simple descriptions so it is easy to choose. So maybe someone can talk Shuttleworth into either packaging similar Linux programs(games pack,office pack,school pack,etc) into a nice set of CD or DVDs that can sit on a shelf,or perhaps have the repos have nice little screenshots of the apps with very simple descriptions and a "learn more" button that would give a more in depth explanation.
4.-Finally for the SMBs. MSFT may hate it and just wish it would die,but there is a damned good reason why VB6 is still the number three business language. It is because VB is the engine that runs many a SMB. I can't count the number of times I've walked into a place and their mission critical app,be it a POS,a billing app,customer database,etc, was a VB app.For SMBs VB just works and works well for those little "one of a kind" personalized apps that all SMBs seem to have a need for. An easy to use VB plugin would go a long way to converting your SMBs. Sadly though you'll never be able to convert around 25% thanks to those damned IE Intranet ActiveX laden "apps".

So there you have it,my suggestions for switching Joe and Jane and Sam without having them go running back to Windows at the first sign of trouble. While some would probably be easiest to fix by helping out the ReactOS guys(and I'm sure they'd like the help) others like the repo idea could be implemented by any major distro with some work. But these are the ones that have been deal breakers when I have tried to convert users to Linux. Maybe if Win7 turns into a giant pile of super suck like Vista it will be easier to get them to switch. Or maybe they'll just do like most of my current customers and hang onto XP for dear life,I just don't know. But having even just 1 and 3 would go a LONG way to helping guys like me switch the customers I see walk through my door.