> The company I've founded in 2007 never ever sent out any document in MS Office format, never owned any copy of MS Office, and we survived since then just fine.

It's great that it worked out for you, but that's just not the case in the most business environments I have been dealing with. When a person sends out a document to a customer, and it turns out that customer didn't see the content as intended, alternatives get deleted and MS Office gets reintroduced.

Just to be clear, I'm not a proponent of MS Office. As a matter of fact I run on Mac and Linux and don't have much touching points with Windows, but MS Office is simply a necessity in most business environments.