Newsroom

Microsoft Fights Google Apps with Free Office Web Apps

Date: Jun 09 2010
Author: Barry Levine
Article ID: 1917

If you never thought you'd live to see the day when Microsoft gave away its key Microsoft Office applications for free, congratulations on your longevity. On Tuesday night, the software giant made stripped-down versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote available on the web, following an extensive beta phase.

On the company's Windows Team Blog, Windows Live SkyDrive Program Manager Jason Moore wrote Tuesday that Office Web Apps is now available on SkyDrive at office.live.com to consumers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Ireland. While free to consumers, Web Apps is available to all volume-licensing customers, or a subscription can be purchased as part of Microsoft Online Services. Office 2010 itself, with a range of pricing options, became available in mid-May for business users and will become available next week for consumers.

Real-Time Collaboration

Office Web Apps allows users who have a free Windows Live account to upload one or more documents, such as an existing Word file, or to create them in a browser. If the company's free Silverlight application is installed, documents can simply be dragged and dropped into a browser to be uploaded.

On SkyDrive, recently edited or viewed documents are at the top of the list. An "edit in browser" option requires no special software. Colleagues can coauthor a document in real time. Instant messaging between coworkers utilizes Messenger on the web, whether or not Messenger is installed on the users' computers.

Version history allows an author to return to earlier edits of a document, and enhanced search enables searching across documents you've created or that you share. Additionally, Microsoft has said that "most smartphones" can also view the documents online with no additional software.

Microsoft's entry into free, online versions of its crown jewels is seen by many observers as a countermove to Google's increasingly functional, cloud-based Google Apps suite, which also offers word processing, spreadsh...Read the entire article...

© Copyright 2000-2010 NewsFactor Network. All rights reserved.