Microsoft announces Office for the web
Microsoft has announced a light version of its Office suite that runs in a web browser. This new Office version is part of a ‘strategic shift’ towards web applications.
With the announcement Microsoft is breaking with its previous strategy of using online office software only as a supplement to the licensed version purchased and installed. With the move, Microsoft now seems to follow the example of Google, which already released online office applications about two years ago. Nevertheless, the software giant speaks of a ‘software plus services’ strategy, rather than the more usual ‘software as a service’. The company plans to make Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Onenote available through the web browser.
Microsoft will make its Office web applications available in a subscription version and an ad-paid version. The adware version will lack some features compared to the subscription version, but how big the difference will be is still unclear. In addition to Internet Explorer, the web versions will also work with Firefox and Apple’s Safari browser, the company assures. Support will also be provided for smartphones running on Windows Mobile. The web applications will be released together with the next version of Microsoft Office, but it is not yet known when that will be.
The announcement follows shortly after the announcement of Windows Azure for cloud computing, and the web-based Office software will also become part of the Live Services portion of that operating system. However, the arrival of the web office software is also Microsoft’s way of trying to steer customers away from Google Docs, which also offers word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software over the web – although Google hasn’t yet managed to gain a very large market share from it. to build. According to Microsoft, the development was prompted by the perception that users typically work on more than one machine, often including machines that are not their own. Collaboration on documents is also often necessary, in which case the internet is an obvious medium for accessing files.
The arrival of ad-paid Microsoft software has been anticipated for a number of years, and it is believed chief software architect Ray Ozzie has led the company down the road. Three years ago, he wrote a number of memos that leaked, suggesting that ad-supported software could generate more revenue than software marketed in the traditional way. Chris Caposella, vice president of Microsoft’s Business division, shares that mindset. “We have a huge number of users, but very few pay us,” said Caposella opposite Reuters, citing the many pirated copies in circulation. The Microsoft CEO sees an adware version of Office as an opportunity to generate revenue from users of the software that Microsoft would normally receive nothing from.