Big Winner in Office Web App Announcement: Google Chrome OS?
Microsoft today announced the start of the Office 2010 preview program. A new, larger group will get to start playing with the next major version of the Office suite next month. This announcement is not a surprise and was widely expected to be made today. The news was accompanied by even more information about the online version of Office, the Office Web Apps. This online version is aimed at competing with Google Docs, Zoho and others. Like most online apps, the Office Web Apps are designed to be run from the cloud, completely in a user’s web browser. The “app in a browser” function of Office Web Apps may make future Google Chrome OS users the big winners, given the timing of both products for next year.
Office Web Apps will be free to Windows Live users, which is hardly surprising given the free nature of Google Docs. The online storage will be supplied by SkyDrive, and Microsoft is not forthcoming on if the apps will be ad-supported. Office Web Apps will be lightweight versions of their full Office suite siblings, and will consist of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The inclusion of an online version of OneNote is exciting, and may offer Microsoft a way to compete with Evernote. Evernote has taken the online notetaking world by storm of late.
While many webworkers and the like have been moving to the cloud in greater numbers, the big winners of the appearance next year of Office Web Apps may ironically be Google Chrome OS users. Chrome OS will no doubt be written to work seamlessly with Google Docs, but the strength of Office in the enterprise cannot be overlooked. It is logical to expect documents created with Office Web Apps to be pretty compatible with the full versions. This could give Office an advantage over Google Docs, something users of the forthcoming Chrome OS could use to their benefit.
It will be interesting to see how Office Web Apps plays out, as far as compatibility with non-Microsoft web browsers is concerned. The online apps will certainly be written to best support Internet Explorer users, but Firefox is now mainstream, so it will likely work fine, too. The Google Chrome browser is a wild card with regards to Microsoft support, as this interview makes clear, so it may face a bumpy road when working with Office Web Apps. Microsoft may have to take some pains to ensure the Web Apps are compatible with Google Chrome, however, to avoid the typical cries of “foul”.
UPDATE: Robert Scoble has posted a number of videos of Office 2010 in action. The last video demonstrates Office Web Apps, and the Microsoft product manager states that they will work in IE, Firefox and Safari.
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I’m pretty sure if the apps are written to work in Firefox using HTML and JS they should work in Chrome, too, unless Microsoft specifically excludes Chrome users (in which case, everyone could rightly cry “foul!”). But as I haven’t been able to play with it yet, I can’t say for sure.
I suspect you’re right. I do expect the primary apps to work, what will be interesting to see is if the frilly stuff works in Chrome too. :)
If they claim to work in Safari they will work in Chrome, both are WebKit based.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft’s Office Web Apps can be used when users are not connected to the internet. Google and Zoho Apps already support this, to some extent.
webs apps good, but the onenote PC based release looks disappointing
This sounds great until you realized that it is technically impossible. MS Office runs in 3 application environments, none of which are available on Chrome OS.
You can run MS Office in these APIs:
- Windows (since 1993 or so)
- Mac (since 1984)
- Internet Explorer (2010)
Google Chrome OS only has this API:
- HTML 5
No match. No running MS Office on Google Chrome OS. It does not and will not run there.
The problem is your loose definition of “Web app”. A Web app is an application written to the Web app API, which is now called “HTML 5″, so that it can run on the World Wide Web. It is not a Windows app that can run in Internet Explorer. Microsoft does not make Web apps. Chrome OS does not get MS Office. Bill Gates’ children do not get an iPod. Sorry.