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Microsoft's Free, Online Version of Office To Premiere This Week
walterbyrd writes "Microsoft will offer an online version of Office 2010 for free. I have to wonder, will this remain free indefinitely? Or is Microsoft just trying to firmly establish its OOXML standard, then go back to business as usual?" Probably a harder sell after Google's acquisition of DocVerse.
Hopefully this won't be bundled with a trojan like MechWarrior 4. THANKS UNCLE BILL.
Raters gon' rate.
As a number of people in the Seattle Times Forum have noted, using this "web based" Office product *requires* downloading and installing an .exe
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Why bother? I swear to god, I can do anything I want in sun (oracle? no hate here.) oo32 that I used to do in o2k3
Have you seen the OO32 release? My God! hahaha
I already collect text editors, but gosh darn I just can's see paying thousands anymore? Maybe you got a translator or some proprietary nonsense? I think we all would be wise to audit and revise what we really need.
Hey if you need Microsoft Office, more power to ya, the only thing I need now is a way to export their proprietary format to a real format which can be used in oo32 ;)
I see MS doing several things with this, including:
The free version builds understanding and credibility; especially if it integrates with teh desktop version. Once taht is done, migrate to paid for versions for businesses since the model is now accepted.
Working to a client server model (despite the "cloud" what's old is new again) and partner / acquire a company in that space to offer businesses a full suite of services.
If OfficeLive catches on, advertising will follow.
Ultimately, I think it's about building a tight eco-system around office / entertainment / information that allows them to capture eyeballs for ads and combat piracy so content providers sign on. This is but one more shot in that battle.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Remember that all Office applications embed a GUID in the document. My guess would be that the online version would as well. So your privacy is up for grabs.
Who cares if it's free, if you don't want it anyway?
And at what point will there be a free windows version?
When they can get it to run in internet explorer.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
andHow about something like this?
"Well, you see, Google got hacked, they had the code to their global authentication taken, who knows what the hackers found there and what access they've got now... So, we decided to go with Microsoft instead."
Deleted
Microsoft has no interest in OOXML. From Microsoft's perspective, it's deprecated. That's why they let it go. This is about XAML, upon which Silverlight is built. And XAML could be a very powerful thing.
A subset of XAML, XPS replaces Postscript. Any static page that can be printed can be stored as XPS. XPS is/will be the printer control language in Windows.
But XPS can also be displayed on screen (good bye Acrobat). XPS could be used to store any static document (goodbye Illustrator).
But the superset XAML is dynamic framework for rich internet apps (goodbye Flash).
XAML pages/apps can be designed in an Illustrator-like ExpressionWeb (goodbye HTML5 and CSS).
Of course, you can use the Office Web Apps without Silverlight and you can still see PNG images of your document. But if you should decide to install Silverlight I bet you'll find it a better experience.
Is Microsoft slowly changing it's business model ? Selling Microsoft Office licenses is one of the major sources of revenue.
And at what point will there be a free windows version ?
YES, Microsoft is changing their business model big time. Steve Ballmer announced in his recent University of Washington speech that Microsoft is dedicating 70% fo their software engineers to creating cloud-based versions of their local software, and by next year it will increase to 90%. They were slow to adopt the cloud but plan to become a big contender in a short amount of time.
The speech is about 90 minutes long and is very interesting, for those who care to watch. He's quite a good speaker with a very good knowledge of the industry, and he handles people's questions directly and in detail. What impressed me most was that he openly praises other companies and their cloud apps like Salesforce and Google.
You have shit on your dick? And you're calling someone else a "faggot"?
The summary suggests this is a push to cement the OOXML standard and ultimately lock-in for MS Office. I don't really see why they need a free cloud-based offering to do that, MS Office has done extremely well at locking-in their standards in the past. TFA that it refers to also clearly argues this is MS having to compete with Google Docs, a much more evident profit motive. MS is also quoted that they see this as an opportunity to get at least a little income from people who, for various reasons, aren't currently paying for MS Office.
Whether it remains free indefinitely depends on how it works out, i.e. whether they think it is making more money (directly and indirectly) than doing something else. Stating the obvious but it's a silly question. Even Openoffice is freely supported by Sun for a profit motive: breaking the MS standards lock-in.
The Google quotes are on the money though. It's standard practice now for businesses to install Office on every machine while all the documents are saved to a network drive. This is a bit of a kludge really, people hunting through directories trying to find files is very cumbersome, especially since lots of people insist on saving works-in-progress to their desktop and only copying over when they're finished - and very often forgetting or not getting around to it.
Or is Microsoft just trying to firmly establish its OOXML standard,
I doubt that's the case at all. When you're going against other software such as Google Documents, you either have to offer a better product, tight lock-in, or better pricing. Free is hard to beat, you've committed (on paper anyway) to open standards which greatly hobbles your lock-in, and so you're left having to offer at least a good chunk of the features the competition is giving that you currently are not.
Right now, Google Documents is offering a powerful new online service. I use Google Spreadsheet daily. It ain't perfect, but considering how new it is, it works amazingly well. It's easy to forget you're using a web browser when you just hit certain key combos for example out of habit, and to your surprise, they work perfect. Some of my spreadsheets can't be used with it, but the ability to collaborate online with others maintaining the same spreadsheets, at the exact same time, no emailing files back and forth all day or fighting over update locks on the LAN (or possible file corruption / data loss from an update war) it provides a unique, powerful, useful feature that my current use can't live without, and that MS Office doesn't offer. And my needs are far from unique. Everyone I tell about this is amazed and wants to try it because it gives them a useful option that MS Office just can't deliver.
This is it for Office, this is their shot to either keep or lose a market. It's not surprising in the least that they're rushing to get something available asap for online collaboration.
And if it were anybody but google, you can bet your last dollar that MS would have a whole herd of lawyers at someone's door with fistfuls of litigation trying to put a stop to it or at least stall it a year or two to give them a chance to catch up.
IMHO Google Documents is one of THE best things to come out of Google Labs. In the end, who knows, maybe MS will be offering a superior product. But there's simply no way this could happen without the necessary motivation.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
This is completely not true. Have you actually ever tried to get the first sample for free? It doesn't work.
Everything you describe already exists. What possible reason would people have to throw it all out and move to Microsoft't proprietary (and probably patented) standard?
Parent IS NOT "informative". You may not create new documents with this web app unless you have the EXE installed. The Parent is "Uninformed".
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
WordPerfect was effectively dead long before Office 97 came along.
Naw ... this one is like crack. Getting you hooked is "free" but once your documents are in its clutches, um, I mean file format, then your ass belongs to them.
Yup, I believe the same. I wonder what happened to /. "itsatrap" tag, I I kinda liked it as it separated in a clear way stories from Microsoft.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Firstly, if docx files were plain text markup (PP asserts that is "exactly" what they are), then any word processing package would be able to reproduce, exactly, the documents as they appear in MS-Word. Other applications are not able to do this, and the reason is because the file format is NOT plain text markup.
Secondly, nice distraction with HTML. Since when is the web supposed to be an archival medium?
GP was on-topic. The specification for OOXML includes references to previous .doc file formats, hence discussion of those is relevant in any discussion of OOXML.
I'd say your post is one-eyed to the point of propaganda -- were you paid to write it?
OOXML (not to say that I'm claiming that .docx is exactly OOXML, it isn't) can contain proprietary binary blobs. Or has Microsoft gotten around to providing a "make sure that this document will be easy to transfer to other formats" button/preference. No? How surprising....
> Now how hard it is to do this, really depends.
Duh. So prove to us that it's easy and release, in the near future, an open-source renderer for .docx which is 100% compatible with the behavior of any given version of MS Office (my guess is that they don't all render it exactly the same, themselves).