Google To Microsoft On Office Vs. Docs: Oh Yeah? | Hacker News Reader

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

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28 pointscummon22 comments

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.

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.

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

OOXML is no easier to decode than the old memory-dump and COM-based DOC formats which were comprehensively documented first by third parties and then Microsoft. It's just like how SWF was trivial to decode long before it was 'opened'. Container formats are fucking easy.

What's always been insanely difficult is duplicating the API that the content interfaces with, bug for bug.

As someone who writes an Open Source OpenXML decoder I find it way easier than COM. The OpenXML specification docs are comprehensive, when there's a problem - usually detected by OpenOffice's parser as Word is very forgiving - the specs have a specific answer.

There's good development tools including a Firebox style Xpath app for Word too.

The main issue is MS Office 2007 and 2010 generating the legacy OpenXML formats by default, which include a world of possible features including quite a few from Lotus 123. There's too many edge cases to handle, and this isn't the right format for docs made this year.

'decode' was probably the wrong word to use there — how about 'consume'?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

"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.

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

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.

There is more at stake than this. The danger for Google is that Microsoft controls the experience of most clients. If Microsoft's services become the standard then this cuts off Google's revenue and kills their business.

It's easy to see what Microsoft would like, office online users to use Silverlight "for better rendering" which really means windows and ultimately IE. This matters to Google in the long term, hence their move into software/hardware to provide competition.

And explain which side is which?

In my mind, Microsoft has to keep fighting this battle against Google, who gives away a product for free just so that the battle is waged on the web rather than on the desktop.

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I may be in the minority here but I've tried google docs and have ended up reverting to MS office, more so for spreadsheets.

As someone who uses Excel daily at work (beyond just basic features), I feel Google spreadsheets is a long way behind. The main issues I have with google spreadsheets is the lack of shortcuts compared to Excel and slow responsiveness. I only use Google spreadsheets for very basic things like keeping a personal budget.

So I can see programmers and designers flocking to Google docs but not people who use Excel regularly at work.

It is indeed hard to imagine business users doing complex computations on google spreadsheets. I fall back to excel in those scenarios but use google for simpler usecases.

This article is about Microsoft's web-based alternative to Office, not the Office rich client.

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