The comment from a Microsoft VP says "we're not seeing any inclination that Zoho or Google or Zimbra or any other of those offering fake Office capabilities can replace [Microsoft Office]."
Given that he's spot-on right, I'm not sure what the big deal is. The online office apps don't even compete favorably with OpenOffice, much less Microsoft Office.
On the other hand, Microsoft's Office Live offering isn't going anywhere as far as I can tell. They don't understand the importance of simple.
"The online office apps don't even compete favorably with OpenOffice, much less Microsoft Office."
What MS Office does well, these online apps do passably at best.
But what the online apps do well, MS Office doesn't do at all. Like getting the same documents from anywhere you are, collaborating with people, making things publicly viewable with a click, and building a web survey that feeds right into your private spreadsheet.
The online apps just need polish to compete with MS Office. Office has to completely transform and go online to compete with them.
And guess what? If it does that, it has to play catchup with them, both in making things work in the browser, and in mindshare.
> What MS Office does well, these online apps do passably at best. But what the online apps do well, MS Office doesn't do at all.
Microsoft Office is, arguably, the most successful software line in history. It has remained so despite all the naysayers, despite numerous free replacements with at least respectable basic functionality, despite its relative lack of improvement in features and/or usability in recent years, and despite the fact that the technologies to do all these on-line alternatives have been viable for several years now. Perhaps this tells us something about how much the competitive "advantages" of all these other products are actually worth.
> Like getting the same documents from anywhere you are
I had this really cool idea for that once. I called it a "file server".
> collaborating with people
I had this really cool idea for that once. I called it a "file server". (Or did you mean in real time? Because I haven't seen even a prototype for that so far that would be useful in practice.)
> making things publicly viewable with a click
I had this really cool idea for that once. I called it a "web server".
> building a web survey that feeds right into your private spreadsheet
I didn't have any cool ideas about that one, but about a million other people did, and they all made simple web sites to do it much better than any of the on-line office suites I've seen so far.
> The online apps just need polish to compete with MS Office.
Sure. And so do Notepad and Calc.
Sorry for the cynicism, but I think you are vastly overestimating the significance of these products in the market and their future potential. Even if the idea of an on-line office suite has merit -- and the jury is still very much out on that one -- the execution of the toys available so far isn't even on the same scale as products like MS Office, or various other respectable desktop applications.
>> But what the online apps do well, MS Office doesn't do at all.
Yes, but:
1) This will probably change next year with Office 10
2) It can be partially supplant with online sharing services. For example, I use Office 2000 (still a good product) with Live Mesh, so I can access my files from different locations. I think the collaboration could be achieved this way as well.
Given that he's spot-on right, I'm not sure what the big deal is. The online office apps don't even compete favorably with OpenOffice, much less Microsoft Office.
On the other hand, Microsoft's Office Live offering isn't going anywhere as far as I can tell. They don't understand the importance of simple.