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Comment by dabedee | Hacker News Reader

I laud the attempt and I think it's important there are more projects that try to compete with their American counterparts. I do want to gently note that if your entire pitch is "we are a bold, independent European alternative that liberates you from the hegemony of the established American players," maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."

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> maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."

Surely you mean "Microsoft 365 Copilot"?

(I am not making this up. That is what it is called now.)

Realistically, though, I think pretty much _all_ office suites have been called [Something] Office, for about the last 30 years. The Google one ("Google Workplace", formerly "Google Apps") is the only exception I can think of, and I wouldn't necessarily take Google's lead in software branding (honestly, until I looked it up for this post, I thought it was still called Google Apps, and I use the damn thing every day).

Well iWork too. Before that, AppleWorks/ClarisWorks, but yeah, there's things like OpenOffice.org/StarOffice/LibreOffice/NeoOffice which are pretty much all the same lineage (StarOffice and its derivatives). Zoho's is Zoho Office Suite, which at least adds an extra word.

"Work/Works" tended to be used for specifically integrated office suites (AppleWorks/ClarisWorks, and then Microsoft Works). Though iWork is _not_ one, granted.

I think integrated office suites have now entirely died out.

Isn't LibreOffice still an integrated office suite like OpenOffice.org was? I never bothered installing it, so I'm genuinely asking about that one.

But Google Workspace would probably count as a fully integrated suite.

LibreOffice is like Office a collection of intercompatible apps. Microsoft Works was a single application offering Word/Excel/Outlook-like functionality.

And, oddly, a terminal emulator.

1980s office suites very commonly included terminal emulators, because they were in high-demand back then

Most large enterprises, you’d have core business applications running on a mainframe or minicomputer or Unix host, and you’d need a terminal emulator to access them from your PC/microcomputer. A lot of places used mainframe/minicomputer-based email/calendar (e.g. IBM PROFS, DISOSS, SNADS, Office/36, OfficeVision; DEC ALL-IN-ONE; DataGeneral CEO; HPMAIL; etc) and centrally hosted word processing systems (e.g. IBM DisplayWriter) were commonly used for document/content management. And then added to that you had services like CompuServe and BBS systems

It is likely the Microsoft Works developers dogfooded its terminal emulator a lot, since at the time Microsoft ran its business on Xenix servers, until they eventually migrated to Windows NT in the first half of the 1990s

In fact, MS-DOS was initially developed on mainframe/micros and targeted the IBM PC via cross compilation and link cable, they weren't doing it directly.

That isn't true, but I don't blame anyone for not understanding what Microsoft marketing is doing in terms of branding.

See for example: https://www.theverge.com/tech/856149/microsoft-365-office-re... or https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/01/11/office-is...

Microsoft Office still exists, the current version being Microsoft Office 2024 for Mac & Windows. But THIS Office is the the non-subscription version of Office, this is not the cloud-connected Apps being offered via Microsoft 365. This version of Office doesn't get all the latest cloud features and stuff happening in the subscription versions.

The cloud version of Office meanwhile is being renamed left and right. The office.com homepage now redirects to Copilot and is rebranded as Microsoft 365 Copilot just like you said. If you have any M365 business or enterprise plan Office is actually called "Microsoft 365 apps for business/enterprise".

Now why the Microsoft marketing team is adamant on changing and mucking about with such a long standing brand as "Microsoft Office" nobody understands.

For me, the charitable interpretation is that office is very close to a default term for the category of the software. Open Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, Only Office, Polaris Office.

One thing that may contribute to Europe's and the world's independence from Office is the notion that it's no longer a term distinctly associated with a Microsoft product.

I don't entirely disagree though because they could have attached some distinguishing prefix or suffix. Maybe that's what the .eu is.

I think they could've worked a little harder to at least find a noun you could futz with so it has some commonality between european languages. "Office" is probably well known, but it doesn't "feel" very european to use a noun that's different from most other EU languages translation. Could be "Productiv" or something. It feels like the federal government here in Canada has a team of language nerds ready to smash together a clever french-english name with two superimposed meanings when needed. ("O-Train", Ottawa Train, Au Train. "Via Rail". "Service Canada". "ArriveCAN". etc)

You can't tell me there isn't a few turbo-nerds somewhere in the entire continent of europe that will find the intersection of 6-7 languages to name an EU groupware suite.

Ireland is in EU. English is the primary language there (even though it is not the original language).

Also, English does work as a sort of Lingua Franca across EU countries.

Nothing wrong with it.

Correctamente:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English

I know, that's what I meant by "most other EU language translations". But to me at least, this is a brandable name. Why not do something "unifying" across many european languages, not just something that works in a singular one?

It's more of a plea for creativity rather than pragmatism... but I'm arguing for creativity from a government agency... so I might be a bit off base here haha

To be frank, any European language is a minority within the continent as a whole. English at least makes it marketable anywhere.

If I was the one to suggest a catchy name I would pick something in Latin or Greek.

Oficium has a nice ring to it.

Too bad ".um" TLD is tied to USA. ofici.um would be a sick URL/name.

Fair point! Yeah I guess I should sorta reframe my thinking as “something more creatively European”… It doesn’t have to be cross-lingual. (if that’s a word)

Oficium goes hard. I would absolutely push for that if I had any sort of involvement in this project.

bEUro

I already love it like, 10x more than "office.eu"

I love the proposal, although in my ears it sounds like a drunk German trying their best.

Euffice.

To be fair, Microsoft Office doesn't exist anymore as a separate brand:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-offi...

"Office is now Microsoft 365, the premier productivity suite with innovative productivity apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. Office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows are combined in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app—with a new icon, new look, and even more features."

You can count on Microsoft to mess up their marketing message in the craziest ways. Why stick with the best-known productivity software brand on the planet when you can call it "365 Copilot"?

I doubt this will stop the lawsuit. Also Microsoft still absolutely sells Office 365 tiers separately from Microsoft 365 tiers. Their marketing is terrible and confusing but Offie definitely still exits as a brand, and you can bet your bottom dollar the lawyers are going to be having a great day on Monday.

> I doubt this will stop the lawsuit.

I mean, I think that ship has probably sailed. Borland Office showed up at about the same time as Microsoft Office, in the late 80s. Then StarOffice, Corel Office, Wordperfect Office, throughout the 90s... If Microsoft had a defensible trademark there, then this would hardly be the first target. And Microsoft barely uses the "Office" brand _itself_, these days, and hasn't for years.

(There is still a product called Microsoft Office, but the thing that most users would think of as MS Office is now, bafflingly, branded "Microsoft 365 Copilot".)

Microsoft does not have a trademark for "Office", which is clearly a type of product and can't be used as a program name (just like you can't name your oatmeal "Oatmeal" and expect trademark protection).

Microsoft does have a figurative trademark for "Office" with the rectangular icon: https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/01141355... - office.eu's logo does not bear any resemblance.

The only way this would be infringing is if office.eu usage could be confused with Microsoft other's trademarks - like Microsoft Office - but I don't see that.

So no, office.eu will have a calm Monday on that front, just like hundreds of other companies offering products with "Office" in their name.

(I'm not a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer before deciding to take on a trillion dollar company).

I can't wait to launch my Office alternative in Cameroon, office.cm. I do suspect using such a generic TLD swap of Office's well-known domain for a knockoff is particularly perilous compared to others mentioned. Bear in mind the possibility for consumer confusion is a top criteria.

>just like hundreds of other companies offering products with "Office" in their name

There may be hundreds of other companies selling products with the noun "office" in their names, but there only is one producing a productivity suite called simply "Office". I would expect launching another productivity suite called "Office" would be trademark infringement. Just like I can't release a car called "Beetle" or "Golf".

> productivity suite called simply "Office"

Microsoft Office.

I doubt Microsoft can own a name as generic as Simply "office".

Office.eu does not hold any resemblance to Microsoft Office in terms of logo, typography, makes no reference to MS, etc.

Of course they can sue. The most competent employees at MS are likely their lawyers and lobbyists anyway.

Microsoft never called their productivity suite "simply" office, nor have they registered a product under that name.

If you'd read the article you'd see this one's called "Office.eu" or "Office EU", which is fine.

> Also Microsoft still absolutely sells Office 365 tiers separately from Microsoft 365 tiers.

Case in point:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/off...

And yes. Microsoft branding and marketing is absolutely horrendous.

Focusing on the word "Office" feels like a bit of red herring considering it's frequently used in other Microsoft Office replacements like LibreOffice or OpenOffice.

Something like "EuropaOffice" would have followed the historical pattern so it's specifically the lack of an additional qualifier word that's perhaps questionable, not the word "Office."

But it does look like it's always called "Office.EU" in branding so maybe that's enough?

It also possibly sets a false expectation of perfect compatibility… you can imagine bureaucrats trying to figure out if a file needs to be opened in Office or Office (new)

Considering that for the average office worker I know switching from outlook to outlook (new) is a major hurdle within the same ecosystem, I can only imagine what they were thinking coming up with a name.

That is not even broaching the sacred domain-specific excel macros which will 100% break when you try and run in this program.

That is a very fair point, there are quite a few businesses and government agencies where I live, which are very deeply entrenched in very complex, decade spanning VBA based workflows that need absolute and fully compatibility before a switch away from "MS 365 Copilot" could even be considered and the name may give false expectations.

Now, I really, very much dislike it that often discussions on sites like this one can be utterly derailed by someone bringing up an utterly unrelated overhyped topic, so feel free to dismiss this, but I could honestly see LLMs providing a potential path to smoothing out such issues. Some model have gotten rather robust when it comes to making targeted changes to pre-existing Excel files dating back to before I was using a computer, including handling very specific modifications to ancient macros across multiple sheets. Perhaps, this could be leveraged to some extent, though being honest and trying not to overhype, I suspect that similar to those planning to use agentic coding to rewrite decades old, tested, crucially important COBOL code in a more modern language, there are likely many edge cases that will be hard to properly cover and if such a solution isn't both absolutely reliable and seamless to the users, large scale adoption by such entities will likely be impossible in the short term.

Outlook New somehow to this day, lacks good feature of Outlook

The Hackernews snark would likely be worse had they called it 'bureau'.

To be fair, one interpretation is spending innovation tokens wisely. Just piggy back off an already understood concept/brand, don't try to be too clever on the parts where innovating won't matter that much.

There's a bit of an issue with the overload of 'office' in the political context, this being an EU initiative and domain but other than that I say good call.

What I get out of that pitch is "use us because we're local to you, and possibly because you're required to, not because we're and good, or that we'll even try".

I mostly interact with smaller contributors to their field, and they tend to be unique and bold, because that's what is needed to be competitive. When they get their uniqueness and boldness out of just being who they are, it doesn't tend to foster the type of uniqueness and boldness needed to make a good product.

In the current climate, using MS Office is a business risk for European companies. Who knows what idea will pop into ol' minihands' head next time he has a bad day at the golf course? Like, it would _not_ be particularly shocking if at some point in the next 2.5 years he attempts to interfere with the ability of US companies to sell services to Europe. You can no longer depend on "but that would be an obviously terrible idea, so they won't do it" as an operating principle; see the tariffs.

Frankly, right now, there is a lot of money to be made in just providing safer alternatives to American cloud stuff. They don't need to be _better_, they just need to be based in a stable jurisdiction.

The way we are now, it is a liability to rely on foreign technology for anything critical, we should be back to the cold war days, were plenty of countries had their own computers, operating systems, programming languages.

It is going to be pleasant? No, and it is going to take a few decades, however we cannot afford to have kill switches in the hands of foreign nations, even if their software is the best in the planet.

Office is a software category. Just because one competitor names things as "the car"(TM) doesn't mean you can't call your vehicle a car. Also it is (was) actually called Microsoft Office for a reason, because it is the Office software from Microsoft.

In fairness, Office is as generic a term as one can come up with for such a software suite. On top of that, I wouldn't be surprised if that fell under Genericide like Lego or Google and, lest we forget, the Microsoft Office brand does not exist anymore, it is 365 and Copilot now...

That word is not as loaded as you might think it is anymore. At least not with the next generation of users.

With your average 18-24 year old swimming in Google Docs, Notion, Monday, Airtable and a dozen others..."Office" will belong to the EU in no time.

I thought of it branded not Office generically but “Office.eu” but maybe I am wrong ?

The product they're replacing is called Microsoft Copilot 365 :)

More seriously, Office is a great word for what the software package does, and it can't be trademarked. You can have Microsoft Office, Libre Office, and Europa Office.

Yeah, someone could confuse it with WordPerfect Office, Ability Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, or some other obscure software that uses the word "Office" in it's name.

Office is just like using Xerox for copiers, Tempo for paper handkerchiefs, Excel for spredsheets, hoover for vacum cleaners,.... some names stick on the common mind.

Office is like the Xerox of photocopiers these days. It's no longer an enforceable trademark.

I mean, at least the gloves come off, who’s going to come after them for using the name? Microsoft? EU will just invalidate their patents. Done. Bye.

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