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Microsoft will face online fight on core software | |
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| Time: 00:15 EST/05:15 GMT | News Source: *Linked Within Post* | Posted By: Kenneth van Surksum | ||
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The co-founder of Hotmail, the web-based e-mail service bought by Microsoft for $400 million a decade ago, is challenging the American software giant’s core $20 billion (£9.7 billion) office desktop business. Yesterday Sabeer Bhatia released a free online rival to the bestselling Office suite of applications that will allow users to view, share and edit documents from any computer. The Indian-born Stanford graduate said that Live Documents would pose a “significant” challenge to Microsoft’s propriety software business, which eventually would be made redundant by the evolving internet applications industry. Office, bundling the Word word-processing, Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation tools, accounted for a third of Microsoft’s total revenues last year. It is forecast to top $20 billion this year. “We are just a few years away from the end of the shrink-wrapped software business. By 2010, people will not be buying software,” Mr Bhatia said. “This is a significant challenge to a proportion of Microsoft’s revenues.” | ||
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| #1 By 28801 (71.58.231.46) at 11/22/2007 9:23:37 AM |
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"By 2010, people will not be buying software,”
That's a good one! I'll take Microsoft's Office profits over "Live Documents" profits in 2010. I don’t necessarily disagree with the notion that shrink-wrapped software is going the way of the dinosaur, I just disagree with the timeline, and only with respect to certain types of software. What is going to set this product apart from the myriad of other web-based office products - Look and Feel? I did like the idea of companies being able to host it on their own servers, but I’m not sure that will be enough to set this product aside from the rest. IMO, this will suffer the same problem as Linux: “Too much choice”. Just as Linux has too many distros for the average home user to make sense of or to dedicate the time to make sense of, so it goes with “Online Office Packages”. (not fanning the flames – just my opinion) How is this upstart going to compete with Google Apps which is far more ubiquitous than all of the online competition put together? When these online office apps begin to make a dent in MS profits, and eventually they will, MS will simply have to lower the price of Office. In ten years MS might not be making 20 billion but they will still be making billions from Office. |
| #2 By 1896 (68.153.171.248) at 11/22/2007 9:35:24 AM |
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Actually I already buy several programs simply downloading them instead of walking in a store and buy a box but I am not interested to use program hosted somewhere else and less than ever to have my data "in the cloud". I have servers in the office and I have had a server in my house for years and I am going to keep things this way.
Besides the issues of connectivity what if something happen and the host declares your software expired or unlicensed etc.? I am not going to give big companies more control. Actually I would like to see the opposite although here there are very few chances that this will happen. This post was edited by Fritzly on Thursday, November 22, 2007 at 09:38. |
| #3 By 8556 (12.210.39.82) at 11/22/2007 11:51:33 AM |
| I only use web documents for collaboration. The speed of use of locally installed programs is their best feature. Open the notebook lid, get out of suspend in two seconds, open any Office program and start typing. I can have an invoice competed, and printed, in the time it takes to log in and get started when using an online office suite. Online suites will not kill off office suites, only complement them. |
| #4 By 9589 (71.49.188.113) at 11/22/2007 3:27:45 PM |
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It must be a slow news day . . .
Meanwhile, how many of you actually use a free "office" suite of applications. What's that? No one. How many of you use the best office suite available, Office? I thought so. And, why do you use it? I use it at work because I can get e-mail from either Outlook on my desktop or on my Smartphone. I use it because of my team and the rest of the corporation uses Microsoft SharePoint Server. Again, integrated and used as a part of Office. Then, there are the proprietary tools built in house or bought from third parties that enhance or add-on to the various application that make up the suite. They number is the tens of thousands and help people get work done in a myriad of industries. I could go on and on, but it is absurd to do so. What is annoying is that neither the creator(s) nor the "journalist" are interested in the above aspects of why Office has not been usurped all these years. "Journalists, stop the Microsoft hate. It's just boring. When you do an interview, do so as if you were going to actually buy/use the product. Hey, even if it is not a Microsoft product, you can point out its deficiencies. While it may be cool to like/go FOSS, it's not cool to be stupid. |
| #5 By 23275 (71.12.191.230) at 11/22/2007 9:49:52 PM |
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#4, That is hands down, the best post of 2007!
I hope a great many people read it. Happy Thanksgiving! Lloyd |
| #6 By 88850 (221.128.181.109) at 11/23/2007 2:31:56 AM |
| Another wannabe desperate online Web 2.0 company. |
| #7 By 37 (66.188.104.250) at 11/26/2007 5:15:11 PM |
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"Meanwhile, how many of you actually use a free "office" suite of applications. What's that? No one. "
I use NeoOffice for Mac at home, and it's a free office suite. |
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