Microsoft Prepping Browser-based Word and Excel

JCWDenton writes "In a bid to spin its web-based version of Office into contention with rival internet behemoth Google, Microsoft has said it will begin accepting applications for beta testing its web apps later this year. There is one significant difference, however: unlike Google apps, Microsoft said users of its new service can only create or edit online documents if they have Office software already installed on their machines. Microsoft said features of its Office Live Workspace would include allowing users to upload more than 1,000 documents to free personal websites."

What's the point?

If you have to have office installed, why bother with the online version? I could see them requiring office to register for an account. But why bother?

Re:What's the point?

If you have to have office installed, why bother with the online version? I could see them requiring office to register for an account. But why bother?

There is no point. You need to see Microsoft thinks in multiple steps, and this is just step 1.

Step 1 is about rolling out a beta of this software, and allow the public to test it, give feedback, and their devs to improve on that.

The fact they offer it only to existing customers means there's no chance that this may hurt their Office sales. And it also lets the world know that Microsoft is "aware" of competing web products, such as Google's.

Should things get rough (Step 2), Microsoft already will have a mature web product in their hands, it will have people familiar with working with this product, and have the option of changing how to offer it, including separately for an yearly fee, as Google does.

It's the benefit of having so much money, you can throw them in all directions and use what "sticks".

Re:What's the point?

my thinking on this went like this, 'how can Microsoft leverage their existing monopolies on the Windows OS and office applications?'. Well, putting this out there for free to existing Microsoft Office users is one way to leverage the MS Office monopoly. After all, once Microsoft built this monopoly, they've been really consistent at making sure only MS Office vX users could exchange with MS Office vX users. If they don't tie this with MS Office 2007, they'll surely do so at a later date.

Step One of the forward looking steps which are ALWAYS part of Microsoft's project design principles is 'How can it be used to protect the monopoly?'.

Microsoft does not need any money from these web apps, just needs to make sure the gravy trains of MS Windows and MS Office continue. Google is looking for revenue and coming up with tools/ideas to attract customers. Microsoft is doing what it's done for close to 20 years, attacking new ideas and protecting what it has. IMO.

LoB

Re:What's the point?

Just read the articles and it doesn't bear much similarity to the summary Taco posted. There is a M$ press release [microsoft.com] that describes a off-site document hosting set up. As long as you have Office installed on a machine you can download/edit/review documents from the server anywhere in the world. Not really comparable to Googles offerings.

Anywhere..

Now you can use our software anywhere. As long as that software is already there.

Why the web?

Because math errors on the desktop are so confining.

Already have Office installed

And will work only Internet Explorer, let me guess. This is will be competition, how?

Typical Microsoft-think

Microsoft said users of its new service can only create or edit online documents if they have Office software already installed on their machines

So close, yet so far away...

What a great idea!

What a great idea! Smash the free competition with your version that requires users to fork out hundreds of dollars to get what they can have from the other guy for nothing.

I'm gonna use this model to build a pay per url web and make billions! I just know everyone will want to use MY web, because by paying for it, they'll know it has real value, unlike that free junk!

Knee Jerk, or Just Jerk

Wow, are they getting lazy at M$ or what. I guess somebody got a raise, but I also guess he'll be getting fired in about 6 months when there is no uptake on their generous offer.

Billiam must be wondering how much longer his empire can survive with such stupidity.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Updated versions constantly
• Access from anywhere the tubes go.
• Ease of sharing documents.

Cons:

• DoS attack at Microsoft could mean loss of revenues for companies using this service
• I never have experienced any "outages" of Office installed on my desktop. Have you?
• Do you really own anything but your user name for this service? How expensive is a user name going to be?

No outages on the desktop

I never have experienced any "outages" of Office installed on my desktop...

Then you haven't tried visio [microsoft.com].

Competition is good

Yet another fine example of how competition is good. Although personally I've moved away from the buggy implementation of Google Docs (the text editing is fairly clumsy) to OOo. I've lost access to the internet part however I rarely used it (simply stopped me from opening a second program and the load times were seeing this advantage dwindle). I might have been tempted to try out Microsoft's offering, but I'd rather not be tied to Windows right now (might change later next year when I give Office 2007 a whirl).

Why office should be installed in the machine?

Are they trying to share DLLs between installed MS-Office software and the Web based spreadsheet and word tools? Given their track record this is typically the kind of thing they will do. They preload MS-Office DLLs during boot to create the impression of instant-on MS-Office compared to OpenOffice. (They don't have try this hard to beat OpenOffice in launch time, but that is a different issue). They might tunnel behind the browser and security and everything so that the web based tool can give you faster response time. They don't have to stream in code to execute in the browser and they don't have to send changes back to the server to rerender the page being edited.

I could easily imagine a development team pitching this idea to the pointy haired bosses. "We have this huge installed base of DLLs and megabytes of code already in the client's machine. We beat them in the download time! We execute complex code in their machine, we beat Google in refresh time! yay!! yay!!!" Of course, such a thing would violate all security protocols, and create thousands of security holes, but they won't care. It would not work in any platform other than Windows and they won't care. It might not work in FireFox and they would go, "yeah! that will kill FF"

Anyway this is all speculation, but I don't see why they would demand pre installed Ms-Office to allow a web based tool to work.

Re:Why office should be installed in the machine?

It's much more likely that Office will simply launch as a tab or iframe in IE, with no actual connection to the net besides the ability to store and retrieve documents from one of Microsoft's servers. What's being sold here, ultimately, is an MS-hosted fileserver with provisions for sharing files amongst one's coworkers.

In terms of actual document-editing capabilities, Google's office toys aren't serious competition for anyone. Their strength is in providing collaboration tools for small to medium-sized business. (Forget the enterprise.) OpenOffice actually is competition for MS Office in terms of capabilities, though it still lags way behind in collaboration tools. Until Google -- or someone else -- stops screwing around with second-rate DHTML clones of WordPad, and builds MS Office-equivalent (and interoperable) collaboration tools for OpenOffice, Microsoft has nothing to fear from Google in this area.

In the meantime, Microsoft is just fishing around for new revenue streams. The problem here isn't that Microsoft doesn't get it. They get it just fine. The problem is that neither their customer base nor their competition get it. You and I, dear reader, may be dismayed by their bullshit, but we aren't part of the target market in the first place.

come now. tell me that this isnt a me-too -

- operation after what google did ?

capitalizing on past success

Yes, almost 10 years on the heels of the "smashing success" that is OWA, they're going to move the rest of the office suite to a non-functional, browser incompatible format that costs way more that competing, functional products.

The folks at Microsoft are such innovators...

Other companies already do it better

It's a sad state when other companies have remade MS Office better than Microsoft makes their own software. I like Google Documents and Sheets, but my favorite so far is ThinkFree.com. It's got the look and feel of Office, but all the collaborative features that the desktop software lacks, and it's completely accessable from anywhere in the world from just about any machine. And like Google it's completely free for the online version. The only downside is how long it takes to open a document, but it's a small inconvenience compared to downloading Openoffice on a friend's PC who got shafted with a demo version of MS Works.

Bill Gates quoted as saying

"That's the stupidest fucking thing I've heard since I've been at Microsoft!"

This makes sense...

In other news, Microsoft engineers finally determined JavaScript was sufficiently weak-typed enough to develop production applications in. When asked, lead Application Architect, Jing-Jong Wong Alturi stated "Our skills with the Visual Basic enterprise language will translate nicely to our new web platform. We were able to write Excel macros to take our VB code from our code respoitories, filter it through the advanced mathematic functions of Excel and translate it to JS semantics. Additionally, the memory leaks of most JS runtimes fit nicely into the 'develop' stage of the our development process."

munchausen syndrome

Quick, sell your shares Bill !

is Microsoft serious?

``a significant step forward by combining our deep client and server software experience with...,,

What experience? Is this a joke? They got the date right (at least in my own zone) but the month is October -- not April.

I'm looking forward to...

I'm looking forward to Microsoft's next big thing: The Browser-based Browser. "You can now use Internet Explorer through any other browser, just make sure you have Internet Explorer installed!"

PR speak

FTFA:

Microsoft business division president Jeff Raikes said: "We are taking a significant step forward by combining our deep client and server software experience with our strong commitment to delivering flexible services offerings for our wide variety of customers and their unique needs."

Such language makes me wonder whether English is these people's first language.

Online word processors are not up to par

For the most part, the web browser is too generic to allow any product built on it to compete with an existing standalone counterpart (unless it natively make heavy use of the web), just like Google apps vs Microsoft Office standalone. Hell, even Open Office is having a hard time fighting MS with a standalone product of its own. I can imagine Open Office developers would laugh if approached with the great idea of "going online" to continue competing. You'll always have a select few who are happy with the web version but the stats are extremely small.

The only reason for Microsoft to go online is to provide an answer to Google apps and others like it. Sure it's a useless answer but at least it's an answer. MS office needs better web integration regardless.

Quite simple: stop people from defecting

The point is that people who are most likely to use the Google browser Office apps are those who are using MS Office already. And those are using it in two places, work and home. And they have MS Office installed in both places. The whole point of the move by MS is to protect its already installed user base form migrating to Google browser-based Office, not to recruit new users.

I expect that a lot of corporations will force their employees to use the MS web apps, they just had to wait for MS to release them.

This is partly about Office piracy

I know this isn't some sort of a revolutionary transformation of Office. It's just making webspace available for storing docs, in case you work on the same docs from more than one location. That much is a good idea. The reason why my gradebooks are in the Google spreadsheet is because I sometimes ammend them from any one of four locations.

But the piracy-fightning motivations of this should not be ignored: For the first time, Microsoft can say that a legit version of Office can actually do something useful that a pirated version can't do. It's very easy for them to make sure that pirated versions will not pass the authentication you need to sign up for the webspace they offer.

Another thing they hope for: Once users start building up big collection of files that are hosted on Microsoft servers, this becomes a significant new source of lockin. Competitors need to react now if they want to prevent this. There is a straightforward way to do this: Google could give out some online storage space and make it so that space is mountable like a networked drive from any computer. MS users could just load and save their documents on this drive, say Z:\, and they could be sure that local hardware failures won't wipe them and that any changes made from one location will show up when the file is opened later from another.

I know there are little hacks that allow this already, but they have severe limitations, plus they're hacks. But the existence of the clever hacks gives all the more reason for Google to do this officially.

Can you smell the lock in?

The idea here seems to be to force universities and public institutions to use Microsoft as otherwise people will not be able to access their documents from Microsoft's servers. If this is not a good reason to move away from Microsoft's document formats I don't know what is. Sure, today you can just use your stand-alone version of Office, but will Office 2010 make a subscription mandatory? Will Office 2013 still allow you to store your documents locally ? Really, if you thought Google doing "software as a service" was scary, Imagine what happens when the Windows API suddenly starts to display a lot of "bugs" that cause software that is NOT software as a [Microsoft] service to fail... They will never do it? Just like windows update would "only notify you" about new patches. Just like WGA would "let users know they have a genuine copy" ? They have no qualms trying to corrupt the ISO, they have no qualms installing software on your machine without your consent. It is a BadIdea(TM) to trust them with anything of any level of importance.

ActiveX is not "web"

It seems like they have been trying for something like this for quite a while. Obviously this would be implemented using Win32 ActiveX binaries so it would be IE and Windows only.

Congratulations, Microsoft, you just re-invented client/server architecture, just using web protocols as a transport.

Competition

Maybe Microsoft is simply going to add support to save Office files directly to a "Gmail Drive Extension". :)

If all they are doing in phase one it would be simply a matter of copying someone else's great idea. I save all of my M$ Office files to my Gmail drive and I don't have to worry about even bothering with their beta next year. Office already supports this type of behavior (ActiveX component not written by M$), which is why they will want to re-brand something as their own to stay competitive.

Pointless! But maybe a good direction to go...

I agree that it's definitely pointless to have an "Online Office" that requires MS Office to be installed locally. However, the model opens up some interesting possibilities.

Yes, there are document management solutions already in existence and all that. But here's what would be a really cool thing:

Set up office on the user's machine. The machine may be inside the office network or possibly outside of the office network. Next, there could be some sort of "MS Office Server" running that connects with the Office clients (internally or externally). This could then make the user and office common data available from anywhere without having to deal with much of the nonsense associated with document management systems. The MS Office Server would be that document management service.

Whether or not a user is allowed to save those documents locally or whatever else is a permissions and rights matter that could also be controlled through the server. (Is allowed to save locally, Is allowed to email as attachment, etc...)

How many laptop users have lost critical business data because of lapses in backups or some other such problem?

Now there should also be a Web-Interface version of MS Office that is served up from the server without Office installed locally. This would enable greater possibility to have Linux on the desktop! This can't happen soon enough for me... but what are the odds Microsoft will allow THAT to happen easily or will not try to prevent people from creating such "interoperability" [in violation of court orders]?

Oops, they did it again...

As if Outlook (the Web version) did not suck.

Oxymoronic notions

The word's "Microsoft" and "browser based" in ANY sentence are inherently oxymoronic. They have no place together.

One exception MIGHT be "Microsoft is incapable of creating a browser based application" and its many derivatives and variations.

Thin edge of the wedge

Microsoft is clearly hoping the whole web app idea will fail. To a large extent, Office IS Microsoft. It is their huge cash cow and must be protected at all costs.

But, they don't want to be caught totally unprepared for a paradigm shift, so placing web apps allows them to gauge the market penetration and use of these types of applications, as well as keeping users locked into the MS camp.

But they don't really want to see this succeed, not even a little bit. MS doesn't "get" the web, never has, and if they have to compete on Google's home turf, they will lose.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

Now Office can crash at the same time as iExplore, instead of separately.

It's a real pity

When will Microsoft learn? This is not going to do them any favours at all. If they ever want to compete with Google, they're going to need to grow a brain for starters

Re:Article description is WRONG!

What? A summary is wrong on Slashdot? The last bastion of journalistic integrity has fallen!

Re:Article description is WRONG!

Um, I'm not so sure, from the article:

There is one significant difference, however: unlike Google apps, Microsoft said users of its new service can only create or edit online documents if they have Office software already installed on their machines.

I'm pretty sure I just read only create or edit online documents. Going with the article, I'd say your wrong.

Re:Article description is WRONG!

Their press release talks about the 'rich, seamless experiences' that are 'personalized, integrated and available online anywhere'. Under the 'Office Live Workspace: New Web Functionality for Microsoft Office' they say 'Extend Microsoft Office. Users can easily connect to Microsoft Office Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook on their PC via the Web.' It seems that it is their plan to rival google apps, they are just clueless.