Adobe is getting into the online Office game with the purchase of Buzzword. I haven't had a chance to try out Buzzword yet, but I'm eager to give it a spin. I'm assuming it's Flash based, which if successful, will twist the focus of browsers even more. To me, this is not only a warning bell to Microsoft's Office group, but to IE and Silverlight.
Microsoft's response to all the Browser Office services? Office Live Workspace, which allows you to sync and share files remotely with others. Think in terms of a Sharepoint service.
Unlike how Mary Jo Foley sees it, Microsoft's move is no challenge to Google Apps or any of the other browser-based Office-style products. This is a companion service to Office which shares some of the feature points that these other products provide, however, having the same feature set does not build an equivalent or competitive service.
By this point I would have expected more from Microsoft, but it appears the company is caught up more in playing musical chairs with its product names than challenging itself technically. My hardcore developer friends would argue I'm being over the top here, which I am, but by now I simply expect to see more. It's not there.
What types of things would I like to see? Really take it to the browser Office folks--give them a browser that does editing, does spell checking. For real. People are using "browsers" for editing. Make this top notch via IE. Force the others to follow. IE has been lagging for years and has given others, such as Adobe Flash, an opportunity to split the market in their favor. The challenge is to not let this happen again and it's not simply for competitive reasons--it's because as users of the web we need more capabilities. Not more browser extensions.
I also toss out a question to Microsoft's Office group: Is a distinct, browser-based file sharing service really what people want? Isn't the best model a transparent one? Isn't a data/doc stream that works behind the scenes even better? Why does the user want to go to a browser to get their files? I can see it as a fallback, but is that really the most efficient way of doing things considering the user is already within Office and supposedly Vista? And where's the API that leverages the developer ecosystem? Wouldn't that be something???
In a wrap up this is the trend I see--whereas C# went after Java (a non-threat if you ask me), it sliced up VB pretty well. Fine with me. (The damage the misguided focus did to C++, I'm less accepting of.) And now, in response to browser-based Office-like products, Microsoft is slicing up its own Sharepoint market. Again, fine by me. However, fundamentally, haven't each of these products missed the real boat? I think so. The world is voting with its fingers.
Oh, and one more last thing to remember: Just because Microsoft or any company for that matter releases product XYZ, it may not be a game changer, but it can make a lot of incremental market sense. That's where I see this new Office Live Workspace idea. It's incremental. There's nothing terrible about that. Makes lots of business sense. And at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. As a user though, I still want more.


Incremental Blogger