Microsoft Brings Real-Time Collaboration To Free Office Web Apps

It is!

Because large parts of the target audience for this feature only uses IE? I work with many companies that will take use of this feature, and none of them use any other browsers than IE. Wether or not IE is any good is irrelevant.

Google Docs is a far cry from Office. I use Gdocs, because it's good enough for me, but Office works much better, offers better compatibility with its own file format (not surprising), etc.etc... There is a reason why big companies are moving back to Office after a short encounter with GDocs. I am not a shill, I can completely understand why GDocs is enough for people on HN, but there is more out there. :)

Apple did just release online versions of the iWork apps with collaboration (I don't know how well it works in real-time, but then I don't know that for Office either). They also made fun of the MS equivalent in their keynote.

I'm sure that's unrelated :-)

Where did you see that it only works in IE?

Who said it only works in IE? Works in Chrome for me.

>EDIT: A guy in this thread told it works only for IE, then this statement was fixed in "also works on Chrome". Since I'm a GNU/Linux user I could not verify myself.

I'm pretty sure there's a version of Chrome for Linux.

The online Office apps have been free for quite a while. At least a year now, if not more.

> functional restrictions

The online Office suite has much less functionality compared to desktop versions.

The most loyal Office users are not the people who write 2 page long documents. For example think of a bank who has completely customized Excel so it displays real-time market data. Now that's where you _need_ the full suite.

It was always free, these are just webapps not the desktop Office 365 which is their main product. But it competes favorably against google docs.

8 years after EditGrid.

So just because other tools have this feature it is bad that Office gets it too? I use Microsoft Office and this is certainly a welcomed feature.

> 7 years after Google Docs. What am I missing?

Your right, and don't get me started on Google staring a search engine 4 years after Lycos and Go.com. I mean what's the point.

What am I missing?

Even though I think your trolling I'll bite and give you an honest answer.

There are a few reasons:

1) Google Docs isn't that good. 2) clients want a desktop office suite with the option for a web based office suite to do light work when not at their main machine. 3) people who use the online apps are a click away from downloading and buying the desktop version of office 4) its training non paying customers to use office for when they need a more powerful office suite.

Agree, but then the same should hold for all the 'samsung beats apple in the cell phone market' nonsense.

I believe the fact that you can collaborate on documents online with a suite that offers you quite high level of compatibility with legacy documents is relevant. Also, a big player in the software industry implemented something significant.

It's probably much more relevant to hackers that how important role India plays in controlling AIDS (or, for that matter, the daily BTC/Tesla/etc. posts).

The fact that the most used office suite has added one of the most relevant features which may make it interesting as an alternative to google docs may be somewhat relevant to startups (they may be interested in using the 'most used office suite' again...).

But obviously, you are entitled to your own decisions.

> I flagged this submission, I hope the usual complainers understand why.

Perhaps you could explain why you think this is flag-worthy? I could understand that you might find it unimportant, or dull. But you've flagged it, and declared that you flagged it, which suggests you have some strongly negative feeling toward it appearing here.

I'd be interested to see where you'd put this on a scale with all the other stories that get subbed to HN.

Not relevant if your startup never deals with any other companies; a huge number of which work entirely in MS Office.

You really have something against Microsoft don't you? It's kind of weird that from the dozens of posts that appear on HN on a daily basis, most(more than 80%) of your comments are on posts about Microsoft or nokia. (and even when the post isn't about them, your comment is).

Oh and you actually do submit stuff about Microsoft, but they are all Anti-Microsoft posts. (do elaborate how THAT equates to startup-relevant)

As much as we hate shills who just blatantly support brands for no good reason, we also hate people who blatantly hate companies for no good reasons. HN is a place for reasonable debate. If you think Some big player did something right, you praise them. If you think they made a mistake, you point it out and discuss why it is a bad move on their part. But why the pure hatred?

works fine in chrome for me

Yes it does. This is hokum and misinformation.

<joke>Hey, this statement generated a mess up the thread! You troll! :D</joke>