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Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

I'm not an Excel user. Genuinely curious: Is it really that the alternatives are worse, lacking features, unstable, or does it come down to "they're not Excel", in that they're not a drop in replacement that can perfectly load and run every Excel sheet ever created.

Because that would be my gut feeling: Not interoperable enough, since some things just work differently, but not necessarily much worse. If you can't send your sheets to company b without being sure they can properly use it, it's worthless. Pretty much the same problem with Word.

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A PM that worked on Excel in the late 2000s explained it to me like this: Most people use about 20% of the features in Excel - which should make it easy for competitors to copy, right? The kicker is that different people/industries tend to use a “different 20%” of the features, making the barrier to really compete very high.

> The kicker is that different people/industries tend to use a “different 20%” of the features, making the barrier to really compete very high.

The thing is that different job functions that are exposed to overlapping user bases in the same industry (and even office) use a different 20%. If it was just per-industry variation, it would be easy for industry-specific competitors to succeed, but the parts of Excel used actively by Andrew, who makes a tool that is also consumed by Bob and Carol are different than those used actively by Bob and Carol (which also differ from each other, and which each have their own users who rely on the tool and the features it relies on, even though they don't actively use the features.)

It was that combined with Microsoft somehow finding a way to make it so the 80% of the features that you didn't use didn't get in the way. Same thing with Word.

Excel gives you the power of being a programmer without having to admit that you're programming. There are people who do absurdly impressive things with it, the CA-GREET model for estimating CO2 outputs is an excel workbook that took me a while to figure out how to even use.

But the barrier to someone using it is much less because it is gentler than, say, giving someone python code to do the estimate and expecting them to do it correctly. I think the interface familiarity is key.

Unfortunately, while LibreOffice is usually pretty good at all this, it's always just one or two peculiar difference in function calls that breaks it. It's pretty close, but just not interoperable for anything advanced.

My impression is that Microsoft has sweated the details of Excel, the way that Apple sweated the details of the iPhone, so that it is extremely smooth and quick. This in turn makes it literally less physically laborious to use. Things like casually swiping the mouse across a range of cells to select them.

I suspect making it work this way requires an army of developers and some corporate will power. Having an inside track on exactly how the OS works may be an advantage.

> sweated the details

I strongly suspect you are correct. As stale evidence of culture, I offer some writing by a software developer who used to work for Microsoft on Excel:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/24/user-interface-des...

I am an Excel user and nothing beats it in terms of functionality and add-ons but it's the win32 level of usability that scores it for me, nothing comes close to packing so much in to such a practical workspace. Don't even get me started on Project desktop and some key add-ons!

One problem with sheets is that its external. Most companies I've worked for prohibit use of external drives/email/apps.

The MS Office suite is far more user friendly than the alternatives.

I still use Libre Office on Ubuntu and I wonder why they chose to be so different. It would be great if they could completely copy MS Office in UI/UX, but there's probably some kind of copyright there right?

The thing is, OpenOffice (and by descent LibreOffice) did copy MS Office's UI/UX. Then Microsoft switched to the "Ribbon" interface, throwing all that shared knowledge out the window. Recreating the Ribbon in LibreOffice is an active development task, last I checked.

Is there any limitations on how much they can copy? Surely Microsoft have some of the design and specs locked down with patents

I don't recall the outcome of that "Apple claims ownership of rounded corners" lawsuit, but I suspect (being absolutely not a lawyer) that'd be the relevant case law.

This really depends on the Google v Oracle lawsuit currently. If Oracle wins then the remains of VisCalc will have a copyright claim against everyone...

Microsoft successfully sued Corel for design patent infringement related to the ribbon interface. Corel had a “Word mode” in WordPerfect X7. The damages were about a quarter million dollars. YMMV.

Oracle v Google is copyright as applied to API’s. Different laws. Patents expire more quickly.

It's a very effective form of distributed / peer to peer lock in.

Even if you individually (yourself or your company) would be willing to move to some decent alternative (they do exist), you will still be exchanging files with people who are more locked in than you (e.g. banks/finance), because of custom plug-ins, custom macros, etc.

If I wanted to compete with Excel I would start with a plugin / add-in or complement tool and work my way from there. Some companies are probably doing it. They're not really replacing Excel itself but capturing some of the value away from Microsoft.

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