Microsoft has recently moved to offer basic versions of MS Office online for free, in a direct strike on recent free web-based office "sniper" products such as Google's Writely and Sun's Open Office.
Microsoft is planning free web-based versions of its word processing and spreadsheet programs. The online versions of the programs will lack many of the features found in the full versions found in Microsoft's Office suite of applications.
Although the programs will be free to use, Microsoft is planning to fund them via advertising.
No date has been set for when the free programs will show up on the net but the software giant told the Reuters news agency that it was "considering" new distribution and payment models for its software.
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