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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