At some point, this sort of fundamental software app. (Office-related software) won't need support. How many times has a Google search helped on a task in Word than conventional Microsoft support? The next move will be to make software self-supporting in some way.
This is good news as it might open the door for more Software as a Service providers into the corporate market.
I would think so. Although in this market, even for traditional software providers it is tough - you need to have a history and they want to be confident that you will be around for a long time. For SaaS this is an order of magnitude greater, so it pretty much will rule out smaller players (at least at this stage).
I'm surprised the article didn't mention Google Gears...