Microsoft Unveils Browser-Based Office Apps

snydeq writes "Microsoft followed up its Windows Azure unveiling by announcing that it will deliver lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote through the browser, a la Google Apps. Surprisingly, Office Web applications will run in Firefox and Safari, not just Internet Explorer. Far less shocking: You won't get Office Web apps free and clear as you do Google apps. The apps are meant to be an extension to locally installed instances of the next version of Microsoft Office, the same way Outlook Web Access provides access to mail without the fat Outlook client."

Comments

MS Gets it right?

[Trojan35]

Positioning it as an extension of office is much more appealing to me than google's broadband-dependent offering. For all the times MS looks completely befuddled by consumer needs, the office team seems to know what it's doing.

Re:MS Gets it right?

[Itninja]

I get a little spooked running Google apps for business (not to say I don't). Sometimes I think, 'wow. if my broadband decided to go down for half a day...then my entire business would grind to a halt'. Not that it wouldn't be impacted either way, but with solely cloud-based basics like word processing, we couldn't even work with files offline until the ISP came back.

Re:Runs on FF/Safair?

[dhavleak]

I'm still hoping to boot Flash to the other side of that line, especially since it crashes my browser on a regular basis, but I still seem to be stuck with it.

Install, and lobby in favor of Silverlight then. Silverlight is far more stable/secure/lightweight than flash, and it's 10x easier to develop for. So if it replaces Flash, you're still in the position of having to install a plugin, but at least you'll be done with browser crashes..