Microsoft Office to go online — for free | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Office to go online — for free

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14 pointsbreck19 comments

If this is true, Google Docs can be declared a strategic success. Microsoft will be sacrificing significant revenue by offering a free version on the web. Figuring out how to distribute features between the free and paid versions will be tricky, too. If people can't figure out whether they are supposed to use the free web version or the paid version, they will be confused and upset just like Vista customers who couldn't figure out which version to buy.

A lot of risks for Microsoft, with little upside. Eric Schmidt must be smiling right now.

The upside for Microsoft is Google completely failed to capitalize on their head start with Google Docs. An online version of Office is going to be huge for Microsoft. People who wouldn't pay $300 for Office 2010 may pay $30/year for more storage and features of an online version. The free version is a gateway not only to an up-sell a Pro version but also to other Microsoft web services. In my opinion Google basically handed Microsoft a golden opportunity to extend their 2nd biggest product to the web by failing to develop Google Docs into a legitimate, fully featured, online office package. They forced Microsoft's hand, sure, but they are doing them a favor too by forcing them to change their business model in a good way. This is finally a service where Microsoft will have an opportunity to compete with Google toe-to-toe without the disadvantage of being late to the game.

Perhaps Google failed to capitalise on it because the price they're charging is the most anyone is prepared to pay for online office applications.

What is Google Docs missing that you think MS can do so well they're going to win market share.

Excuse my skepticism but I'll be watching this only to see what idiocy MS has built in - requires silverlight to enable doc viewing / interstitial NSFW advertising in business documents / only works by using ActiveX / trys to install a Bing toolbar in all browsers before it'll work / relies on proprietary javascript extensions / uses 4GB of memory ... place your bets.

Your assumption is it was Google's goal to drop a lot of money into developing Google Docs just so that Microsoft would then risk losing a fraction (i.e. people that are just barely willing to buy Office) of its revenue while crushing Google Docs out of existence.

A master plan indeed!

And Vista had a million versions. Office already has a lot, but the new one is online and free. There's SURELY enough distinction there for customers to sort it out

I agree. Google is an advertising company -- first and foremost. Their main objective for online apps is to bring users off the desktop and onto the web. They stand to gain from any enhancements to browsers and web apps.

Absolutely, and Eric Schmidt has said this outright in recent interviews. Anytime more people are using the internet, whether it is their or products or not, Google wins.

Ultimately, I think Google Docs is an attempt at diversifying revenues. Eventually, there will be a push to charge more people for the service. Even though Google is a behemoth in advertising, it must be a bit worrisome to derive 95-99% of your revenue from just one source.

Not really. I interpret it the other way--a blow to Google Docs.

MS Office is so much better than Google Docs it's not even a fair comparison. Now they're going to offer a free version which will not only remove most of the reason for anyone to use Google Docs but will also potentially bring in more revenue from the student/cheap crowd(those paying like $150 or less for MS Office now), without losing anything from the business market(I doubt even 5% of businesses would stop using MS Office because now there's a free version online--to most businesses I know, Office is essential to their existence and a few hundred for a desktop version is well worth it).

It's a natural evolution of how software is shifting to the cloud and I think Microsoft has done a good job at not cannibilizing Office's enormous revenue flow while still getting ready for the big shift to the cloud that's coming.

Not so sure this warrants the negative comments. I mean, I'd rather see them go this route than not go this route.

There's some indirect implications of this that I like, too--

By Microsoft's account, Office web is probably the largest javascript/ajax app ever written (or at least really big). They also support Firefox, Safari, and (maybe) Chrome.

I can't fathom how this won't put Microsoft into the javascript performance arms race with IE. How can they not invest heavily in making their own browser lightning fast with complicated ajax apps when all the browsers they support will perform better with Office web than IE?

Just seems to me that with every browser competing to have incredible web performance and compatibility, we're all going to win a bit in this case.

they might cheat and just use activex objects. Of course this means that office won't work on non-windows computers, but I have a feeling they won't care about supporting those.

From what I read, it sounds like they use mostly JS (as it works in Firefox and Safari). I did see mention that perhaps a few corner case features use Silverlight (which I expected to be 100% of the features), but it remains to be seen how much they depend on that.

I only mentioned it because another company (Intuit) has Quickbooks available online via the web, but you need a copy of Quickbooks in order to run it because it uses ActiveX objects that reference libraries from Quickbooks. Strange way to implement their web strategy!

I only hope you'll be able to share documents (at least for viewing) with people that don't have a Microsoft account.

I really don't want to start getting emails from people asking me to log into MS Office 2010 so I can view their "MUST SEE" power point presentation. It was so convenient (and fun) to just tell them I don't have Office.

right. I'm sorry, but the microsoft version of 'free' is not so appealing to me any more. We spent considerable time and money breaking the last bits of heritage from our 'lock in', it would take a very serious reason to get back in to it.

The only reason we still have a single windows machine is because it seems canon scanners are supported on windows only, other than that it's all linux or apple now.

And this being microsoft, and for now it being vapourware I'll hold my breath to see if it is really free or if there is some catch.

It's not vaporware. I saw a demo of it several months ago, and I'd bet it's feature complete by now, or close.

Yeah, I saw a unicorn yesterday. Unicorns totally exist. I bet they've bred with dragons by now and can totally, like, breath fire and stuff.

Microsoft already has free file sharing: http://www.officelive.com:80/en-us/file-sharing

Too late. Also MS Office is too bloated. Google Docs, Zoho, Think Free dominate the market for years. Microsoft can't just grab it.

Users are going to migrate to the brand which elicits the most trust. When Office online launches watch closely... Microsoft's real brand value will be demonstrated. I think Redmond is going to be very disappointed with the ill will they've generated for themselves.

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