Microsoft Accuses Google Docs of Data Infidelity

Hugh Pickens writes "For years Google has been pitching migrations from Microsoft Office to Google Docs, arguing that Docs makes Office 2003 and 2007 better because users can store Microsoft Office documents in Google's cloud and share them in their original format. Now eWeek reports that Alex Payne, director of Microsoft's online product management team, says that moving files created with Office to Google Docs results in the loss of data fidelity, including the loss of such data components as charts, styles, watermarks, fonts, tracked changes, and SmartArt. 'They are claiming that an organization can use both seamlessly,' Payne writes. 'This just isn't the case.' Meanwhile, Google defended its original 'Docs makes Office better' in a statement, noting that it has made a lot of improvements to the web editors in Docs with its recent refresh, and promising that functionality will only get better as Google integrates the DocVerse assets into Docs. 'It says a lot about Microsoft's approach to customer lock-in that the company touts its proprietary document formats, which only Microsoft software can render with true fidelity, as the reason to avoid using other products,' says a Google spokesperson."

Comments

Re:Google vs Microsoft

[DavidR1991]

That's because the formats are 'open' in the sense that they are poorly documented and difficult to implement. Opening your formats is one thing - assisting others to actively achieve interoperability is another

What fidelity

[fermion]

It really is quite amazing that vendor lock in would be the defense. I stopped using MS Word because it would not read my old files accurately. I see students failing papers because the Word on one machine does not read word files created on another machine in a different version. Rather than automatically updating MS Word from MS servers, there is a complex process on has to go through to read files from different versions. It would be nice if they had an online tool to switch versions. At least with Google you are never going to be in a case where you fail a class or lose a contract because you the software won't read the document. Sure they may be data loss, but what is worse. A few mangled graphs, or no product what so ever?

The unfortunate thing is that teachers and professors all see the student issues due to the failure of the MS products, yet continue to insist on their use, blaming it on the incompetency of the students rather than the incompetency of MS.

MS products are good in firms that have the resources to insure all machines are homogeneous and up to date, firms that require a high level of collaborations of complex non-technical documents(This does not include most educational places). Otherwise, at least for documents, OO.org, Google docs, or LaTeX should be the norm. For spreadsheets OO.org, and especially Google, has some stuff lacking. For presentations, I think everything but Keynote pretty much sucks.

Yah, right, whatever...

[inode_buddha]

Because you know damn well that the moment Google Docs achieved true fidelity with MS Docs, then MS would turn around and change the specs again, thereby breaking fidelity...

Re:Seriously?

[selven]

Microsoft's approach involves client retention. Okay, fine. But the way they're going about doing it - making it nearly impossible to write an application compatible with their formats - is anticompetitive and very evil.

And the car analogy simply does not hold. Image files are standardized, and I can expect a .png made in Photoshop to still look the same in GIMP or MS Paint. Sound formats are the same. Even for formatted text, there exists the completely open ODF format. MS's actions in making a format so closed and proprietary that often even different versions of their own software show the same file differently are simply inexcusable.