Google Adds Microsoft Word, Excel Editing To Latest Chrome OS Build

An anonymous reader writes "Google has added native Microsoft Office file editing to the dev channel for Chrome OS. The addition means Chrome OS users on the latest build of the company's browser-based operating system can now experiment with editing Microsoft Word and Excel files. The dev channel for Chrome OS is updated once or twice weekly. Since the feature has made it in there, it's likely to show up in the beta channel, and then eventually the stable channel. Today's news that Google is already working on editing, and not just viewing, Microsoft Office documents in Chrome OS is very interesting because of the potential. Maybe by the end of year, the functionality will make it into the Chrome browser, too."

Comments

Not just for the web anymore

[sl4shd0rk]

Seems google is inventing Gemacs?

Re: Even better: Change MS Office's default format

[Anonymous Coward]

What is more sensible than the MS Office Open XML standard (ISO/IEC 29500)?

An open format.

Office Open XML is an XML mapping of the Microsoft Office binary format. It's less open than a Pyongyang bank on beloved leader's birthday.

Re:Google going for the jugular!

[Colonel Korn]

I don't understand. What does this do that Google Docs/Drive doesn't already do?

Will this get us pixel-perfect wysiwyg editing of Microsoft Documents?

Somehow, I doubt it. Google Docs/Drive doesn't even get that right for PDF documents. I doubt it will get that right for Microsoft Word Documents, which by design are much much worst than PDF documents.

This is Google. They like to make redundant products where they'll get the main concept right but half a half-assed implementation which gets improved for a few iterations before it's abandoned and eventually taken off the market for a somewhat inferior alternative with more social networking features and less core functionality.