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

M$ Way or Highway, Again.

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Run it all on Wine or in a VM instance of XP? That will work for all of six months before the upgrade train moves on.

This stuff is never going to fly and M$ has made all the arguments before. One minute Google Apps are toys dependent on a tenuous network connection and a service provider's whims. The next minute M$ follows through with an inferior copy. In order for this junk to work you need:

1. M$ Office - Local, non free binaries.
2. Silverlight - a patent encumbered, non free replacement for Flash, which also sucked.
3. All the patience and trust you were willing to give Google.

You can do all of that, or use the software you have now. Google Apps is already an easy way to share across platforms. People on free platforms can just "apt-get install openoffice." Perhaps Vista's backward incompatiblity was intentional, to get you ready for the own nothing future.

Really, own nothing. Windows has never been a very complete distribution but Windows 7 is going to come stripped of what little people liked about Vista.

All of this comes down to massive disruption and breakage of investment in Windows Land. You might as well move to a platform that's stable, works and is free. Goog luck to all you die hard Softies that have to implement this pile.