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Ask Slashdot: Can Quickoffice On Chromebooks Topple Microsoft's Office?

Posted by Soulskill on from the yes-no-maybe dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "As we discussed yesterday, Google is bringing a Quickoffice viewer to its new high-end Chromebook Pixel, with full editing ability expected within three months. According to TechCrunch, Quickoffice-on-Chromebooks comes courtesy of Native Client. If Chromebooks prove a hit (and Google ports Quickoffice onto devices other than the ultra-high-priced Chromebook Pixel), could that mean the beginning of the end of Microsoft Office's market dominance of the productivity software space? While Microsoft has been pushing into the cloud with software like Office 365, that's also Google's home territory. But can Google actually disrupt the game?"

5 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Apple were wrong by tuppe666 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The "consumer market" is not what drives Office sales and use, it's business sales and use.

    Steve Balmer said the the iPhone would fail because enterprise wanted a phone with a keyboard [its quite famous]. I don't know if its true about enterprise adopting quickoffice, but the days of enterprise influencing your purchasing habits have long gone.

  2. Re:No. by JDG1980 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most business use Office only because they don't know any better.

    Most businesses use MS Office because:

    1. It's what all of their staff is already trained on.
    2. They need to be able to reliably and accurately interchange documents with other people and organizations who use MS Office. Close isn't good enough.
    3. In many cases, they have business logic coded into some arcane VBA applet. The only competitor I know of that has even started to do anything with VBA is Open/LibreOffice, and even then it is very sketchy and far from enterprise-ready.
    4. MS Office is easy to push out and manage through Group Policy. This is the same reason why IE still rules in the enterprise, even when the IE6 dependencies have finally been gotten rid of.
  3. Re:it doesn't have to by Cwix · · Score: 4, Informative

    My copy was ten dollars for 2013. My 2010 copy cost me ten dollars. Both were the "Professional" versions. Both copies were purchased through Microsoft's home use program. From what I understand if you have a work email from a company that has a Software Assurance agreement with Microsoft you're eligible. You can even just enter your email in to see if you are eligible. If it had been anything more, I wouldn't have been interested.

    http://www.microsofthup.com/hupus/home.aspx?culture=en-US&page=lookup

    --
    You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
  4. Not even close; Office is stupidly overpriced. by tuppe666 · · Score: 3, Informative

    only idiots spent $200 for MS Office at home

    Yeah especially when it only costs $140.

    I would have to pay For the crippled home and business 2013 its £220($333) and for office professional its £390 ($590)

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-office-professional-2013-FX102918381.aspx?WT.intid1=ODC_ENGB_FX010064710_XT103927664&WT.intid2=ODC_ENGB_FX010064710_XT103927685

  5. Re:So, you think the Pixel is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    My company has its own intranet, with online document storage and email that works fine with any web browser.

    Local storage on laptops etc is already being deprecated.