Google To Microsoft On Office Vs. Docs: Oh Yeah?

http://www.crn.in/Software-014May010-Google-To-Microsoft-On-Office-Vs-Docs-Oh-Yeah.aspx

by cummon • 16 years ago

28 18 16 years ago

stanleydrew3• 16 years ago

"DocVerse may be in fact Google's most strategic acquisition in its office productivity software battle with Microsoft."

I don't see how this is a battle. One side is fighting, while the other is constantly shifting the terms of engagement.

rick_2047• 16 years ago

Can you elaborate on "constantly shifting the terms of engagement"?

nailer2• 16 years ago

And explain which side is which?

stanleydrew3• 16 years ago

Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word constantly. But the way I see things Google isn't a software company. By that I mean Google doesn't sell software. Microsoft is very much a software company. They need Office and Windows to make money.

Because Google isn't selling software, there isn't really any competition with Microsoft in the office productivity space. They're not fighting the same battle. Microsoft wants to make money from Office, while Google wants to encourage more applications and content onto the web.

Do you think Google will be upset if Microsoft's docs.com is popular? The answer to that should tell you everything.

endtime3• 16 years ago

I worked on the Word Viewer web app for MS last summer (my team also owned the Word Editor) and complete preservation of rich client formatting was considered a core feature. Trying to cast it as Microsoft "[touting] its proprietary document formats" is kind of...silly. Preserving formatting is a feature, and a useful one at that.

lenni• 16 years ago

If interoperability is important why did Microsoft not get behind OpenDocument? I know this sounds a little passive-aggressive but I'm genuinely interested to know if there was a reason other than NIH.

ajg1977• 16 years ago

the reasons, at least from Microsofts POV, are pretty well detailed and mostly involved backward compatibility and fidelity concerns.

For example, and I forget the exact numbers, at the time the OOXML spec had in the region of 300 pages of documentation around functions and formulae in spreadsheets, and the ODF spec had 6.

Fleshing out the ODF spec to the point it would be suitable is a headache that I imagine MS didn't want.

pieceofpeace• 16 years ago

That is not the point the Google spokesperson was trying to make.

The full quote: "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".

So they were complaining about MS making it hard to decode the Word format and making it tough to preserve format when importing.

endtime3• 16 years ago

.docx isn't hard to decode. ;) Though it is hard to render across browsers.

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

If preserving formatting is such a useful feature why does Word mess up the formatting when you plug in a different printer?

Ask Leo: Why does my Word Document display differently on different computers?:

http://ask-leo.com/why_does_my_microsoft_word_document_displ...

I'd feel a lot happier sending someone a PDF from Google docs than assuming that a Word document will make it unscathed, even if created and viewed in the exact same version of Word.

endtime3• 16 years ago

Seriously? You're asking me to defend some barely relevant quirk of functionality from Office XP, which came out nine years ago, and Office 2003, which came out seven years ago?

I can tell you what was considered important on the Word web app, which is brand new and is what I worked on. I have no insight into the design process on older versions.

pedrokost• 16 years ago

It's not even a battle. If a web app wants to be successful it must be fast - load fast and work fast. Google Docs is blazingly fast, but Office Web takes too long to load to be of any use.

rodh257• 16 years ago

I actually like Docs.com, I think its formatting is better than Googles, and part of me likes that you have to click 'save', but I also don't like how long it takes to save, and also how I can close the browser and lose my work, so I guess they need to do something there (perhaps save drafts on the fly, and then when I hit save, commit changes).

But other than that, The formatting features make me think that Google wasn't even trying...

Google To Microsoft On Office Vs. Docs: Oh Yeah?

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