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Ask Slashdot: Can Quickoffice On Chromebooks Topple Microsoft's Office? 242

Posted by Soulskill from the yes-no-maybe dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "As we discussed yesterday, Google is bringing a Quickoffice viewer to its new high-end Chromebook Pixel, with full editing ability expected within three months. According to TechCrunch, Quickoffice-on-Chromebooks comes courtesy of Native Client. If Chromebooks prove a hit (and Google ports Quickoffice onto devices other than the ultra-high-priced Chromebook Pixel), could that mean the beginning of the end of Microsoft Office's market dominance of the productivity software space? While Microsoft has been pushing into the cloud with software like Office 365, that's also Google's home territory. But can Google actually disrupt the game?"
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Ask Slashdot: Can Quickoffice On Chromebooks Topple Microsoft's Office? More

Ask Slashdot: Can Quickoffice On Chromebooks Topple Microsoft's Office?

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  • So, you think the Pixel is... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Press2ToContinue ( 2424598 ) * on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:00PM (#43029489)

    an enterprise-class laptop? Is that what you're sayin??

    Uhmmm... no.

    • Re:So, you think the Pixel is... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:14PM (#43029611)

      I work in an Fortune 50 company. A Chromebook would be far fitter for the purpose for almost all the roles that Windows computers are used in now.

      Anything that reduces the complexity and mess caused by Microsoft's idiotic document interchange and formatting incompatibilities would make the change well worthwhile.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @09:51PM (#43030397)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by recoiledsnake ( 879048 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @10:13PM (#43030551)

      Why are we discussing whether a office viewer program which does not even having editing capabilities right now and is sure not to get them for the next few months, will beat Office? Is this a joke or what?

      QuickOffice is a proprietary closed source application running on one of the most locked down computers out there, the Chromebook with Secure Boot, where you can't even install Open/LibreOffice like you can do on any Windows PC and is heavily tied to the cloud and is crippled with low storage to encourage you to put valuable files on Google servers.

      Why is Slashdot cheering this again?

      • Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by smash ( 1351 ) on Thursday February 28, 2013 @12:36AM (#43031331) Homepage Journal
        More to the point, StarOffice, OpenOffice, OOo, Libreoffice, Koffice, etc. have all had 1+ decades to kill Microsoft Office and their success rate has been pretty much zero percent.

      • Re:WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Half-pint HAL ( 718102 ) on Thursday February 28, 2013 @08:48AM (#43033133)

        Exactly. Google is squandering the opportunity to use Android to crush Windows, by instead focusing on these stupid "what do you mean you can't afford a 24/7 4G internet connection" toys.

        Microsoft wants to converge the desktop and mobile experience. The most popular mobile OS is Android. Android on ARM laptops has the potential to be the final Windows killer. Google should be making Droidbooks.

        Google is also squandering the opportunity to use Android to cruch Office, because if they put a team together to port LibreOffice to Android, suddenly every Android tablet user would have it as their office suite of choice, and they'd start installing it on their PCs too. Which would help prepare the ground for a corporate migration to Droidbooks.

  • no (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:03PM (#43029515)

    Insert some stupid headline "law" here.

    And then insert some stupid comment about how LibreOffice is awesome (which it is, but in that case, why can't it disrupt MS Office?).

    Insert a comment about how Google is evil (which they are), and how anything that runs in the browser can't be as good as something something mumble something.

    And also, a quick jab about how MS sucks.

    • ... and follow up with a "I'd drop MS like a shot if [alternative] had a OneNote clone".

      ... And no, $Xware isn't good enough.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And then insert some stupid comment about how LibreOffice is awesome (which it is, but in that case, why can't it disrupt MS Office?).

      LibreOffice IS awesome, but there are differences between it & MSOffice that get in the way. The big holdover is medium to large businesses and in some cases schools.

      1. Anyone who has an MSOffice site license or gets laptops from a large corporate account (with MSO preinstalled) will stick with MSOffice until there is a major change in the computing environment because they have a solution that works and they've already committed to the financial cost.
      2. Native file type support - when exchanging docum

    • Nothing more entertaining to try to run Google Docs in a lab on 40 laptops at once and watch the network come to a screeching halt, so I think Microsoft Office's domination is safe for a while yet. You could blame the network and the IT department, but that won't make you any friends and you'll get shot down with the argument that the licenses of Office we already have run perfectly fine on the same equipment.

      And yes, this post is rife with Betteridge's Law offenses. In other words, it's not real news.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by capt_mulch ( 642870 )
      LibreOffice can't disrupt MS Office because if something is free then there must be something wrong with it (that's how they think out in the Pacific). If LibreOffice had a $400 price tag it would be way more popular than it is. (Stolen watermelon always tastes better). That's why people pirate Windows rather then use Linux - free? what's wrong with it? I'm not getting a 'professional' pirated experience if I don't use Windows.

  • it doesn't have to (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alen ( 225700 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:04PM (#43029521)

    MS Office is too featured and too expensive for most users. Most home and small business users will be just fine with quickoffice or one of the free ones.

    MS screwed up by not having a cheap version. they used to have Works but never pushed it to the point of people knowing about it. only idiots spent $200 for MS Office at home

  • No. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:08PM (#43029551)

    Can Quickoffice topple MS Office?

    No.

    The "consumer market" is not what drives Office sales and use, it's business sales and use.

    For various reasons, larger businesses - the major buyer of MS Office license - will not be adopting Quickoffice any time soon if at all.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iserlohn ( 49556 )

      Most business use Office only because they don't know any better. Most people would think the worst is Excel, but from my experience, it is Word.

      You have companies producing very important documents such as highly complex tender responses in Word with tens of thousands of sections and a few dozen contributors. The workflow is terrible when you have more than 1 person working on a big document and because how Word forces you to work, you can have the same level of precision as using a proper markup language

      • Re:No. (Score:4, Informative)

        by JDG1980 ( 2438906 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:39PM (#43029821)

        Most business use Office only because they don't know any better.

        Most businesses use MS Office because:

        1. It's what all of their staff is already trained on.
        2. They need to be able to reliably and accurately interchange documents with other people and organizations who use MS Office. Close isn't good enough.
        3. In many cases, they have business logic coded into some arcane VBA applet. The only competitor I know of that has even started to do anything with VBA is Open/LibreOffice, and even then it is very sketchy and far from enterprise-ready.
        4. MS Office is easy to push out and manage through Group Policy. This is the same reason why IE still rules in the enterprise, even when the IE6 dependencies have finally been gotten rid of.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )
        Most business use Office only because they don't know any better.

        Yep, and there's pretty much no way to educate them otherwise. Managers and administrators don't get their positions by being adventurous, they get there by being consistent and risk-adverse.

        And LaTeX??? Are you serious? I think you enormously overestimate the intelligence of the average office drone. Monumentally so.

    • The "consumer market" is not what drives Office sales and use, it's business sales and use.

      True. On the other hand... Chromebooks are more attractive to businesses than they are to consumers, because there's no administration to be done. Office is a big barrier to Chromebook adoption, but if Google can convince businesses that Quickoffice and Docs can accomplish the same purpose, that barrier falls.

      I'm going to stop short of saying it'll happen, but it's far from inconceivable.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rsborg ( 111459 )

        The "consumer market" is not what drives Office sales and use, it's business sales and use.

        True. On the other hand... Chromebooks are more attractive to businesses than they are to consumers, because there's no administration to be done. Office is a big barrier to Chromebook adoption, but if Google can convince businesses that Quickoffice and Docs can accomplish the same purpose, that barrier falls.

        I'm going to stop short of saying it'll happen, but it's far from inconceivable.

        Of course it's not inconceivable, but is it worth a front-page ./ post title? I'd say it isn't. You might as well ask if Apple plans on going into the search business. I'd say they're equally likely (in that both companies would like for these to be viable, but both assertions are very very bad bets).

    • Apple were wrong (Score:4, Informative)

      by tuppe666 ( 904118 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:38PM (#43029815)

      The "consumer market" is not what drives Office sales and use, it's business sales and use.

      Steve Balmer said the the iPhone would fail because enterprise wanted a phone with a keyboard [its quite famous]. I don't know if its true about enterprise adopting quickoffice, but the days of enterprise influencing your purchasing habits have long gone.

      • The "consumer market" is not what drives Office sales and use, it's business sales and use.

        Steve Balmer said the the iPhone would fail because enterprise wanted a phone with a keyboard [its quite famous]. I don't know if its true about enterprise adopting quickoffice, but the days of enterprise influencing your purchasing habits have long gone.

        Like the GP pointed out, consumers don't buy MS Office (they pirate MS Office), it's companies and organisations who pay for MS Office and who finance its development. If Open/Libre office with a price tag of $0.00 running on Windows can't topple MS Office what hope does Quick Office on Chrome OS have?

        • Like the GP pointed out, consumers don't buy MS Office (they pirate MS Office)

          Ironically in the context of this article, I use libreoffice on my desktop...and I bought my office suite in a sale on Android. Please do not tar others with your brush :)

  • Libre Office QuickOffice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:09PM (#43029561)

    LibreOffice is much better than QuickOffice - and it seems to have had minimal impact on the juggernaut that is MS Office.

    It's a bit like Google and other search engines. In theory one could come along and topple Google. In reality, the reason that Google (and MS Office) are in the position they are in is that "good enough" isn't enough to disrupt the market leader.

    Think about what it would take to get you to shift from Google to Bing. Bing wouldn't need to be as good as Google, it would need to be obviously *better*.

    QuickOffice doesn't have to be better than LibreOffice to disrupt MS Office - it's got to be quite obviously better.

    • Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tuppe666 ( 904118 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:35PM (#43029791)

      QuickOffice doesn't have to be better than LibreOffice to disrupt MS Office - it's got to be quite obviously better.

      Actually Libreoffice is better than Microsoft Office in many ways, Google has Branding [and Money, influence and power], something Libreoffice unfortunately lost [Much to the disgrace of the Apache foundation]. Lets be honest Microsfoft Office in not very good, if it hadn't been for an incredibly entrenched monopoly [or open file formats] it would have been replaced years ago.

      • It only takes a generation (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Belial6 ( 794905 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @10:14PM (#43030557)
        It only takes a generation for a monopoly like that to disappear. I see that with traditional telephones vs. Skype. My son (8) and his circle of friends (6-16) all have smart phones. You would think that they would call each other a lot. They don't. They use Skype almost exclusively. They will sit on their cell phones talking to each other via Skype on the phones. For these kids, the "phone" part of the smart phones is for calling your parents and ordering pizza. For talking to peers you use Skype. My first instinct was to wince at their choice, but I very quickly realized that the problem was mine and that I was falling prey to being used to the traditional phone systems network effect. For these kids, the network effect is pushing Skype over the traditional 10 digit phone system. When new kids join the group, they are quickly pushed to install Skype if they want to be involved in the groups activities.

        Will these kids switch to the traditional phone system when they hit 18? Maybe, but I wouldn't count on it. I have a feeling that they will use the 10 digit phones for what they have to, but that those of us that predate Skype and it's ilk will be dragged into the much better future of post Bell communication.

        If these kids started trading text documents, I don't think it would take long for LibreOffice to topple MS Office in their demographic.

    • Re:Libre Office QuickOffice (Score:5, Insightful)

      by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:55PM (#43029931) Journal

      > Think about what it would take to get you to shift from Google to Bing.

      A gun to my head and my family held hostage.

    • I still think Google should have thrown their money at Libreoffice and financially supported the efforts to port it to Android, instead or in addition to purchasing Quickoffice.

    • Re:Libre Office QuickOffice (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Belial6 ( 794905 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @10:01PM (#43030473)
      I don't know. I keep seeing LibreOffice showing up in more and more households. I started using it because it is just more convenient to download it and use it than it is deal with buying MS Office. Yes, the price difference matters, but the convenience of not having to deal with a transaction and any kind of DRM is the real reason. MS Office is just more hassle than it is worth.

      That being said, I don't do a lot of writing. For 90% of my word processing, (like this) a text box in the browser is more than enough. I am not writing huge novels. I am not doing enterprise level accounting. But, I do believe that I am in the majority in my needs. I tend to use 4 word processors:

      Notepad: When I specifically want to strip special characters and formatting.
      Wordpad: When I want a scratch pad that supports simple formatting
      Google Docs: When I want to collaborate on a document
      LibreOffice: When a want a complex (relatively speaking) document

      I have simply never created a document that LibreOffice wasn't more than adequate for. Word processing reached maturity some time between 1997 and 2000. Word was the best word processor around that time, and thus reached maturity first. I can't pin the specific time that LibreOffice/OpenOffice reached maturity, but it was more than a version ago. We are now in an attrition phase. Word is still prettier than LibreOffice, but for the vast majority of users it is only prettiness and momentum that holds people to Word. Every time a kid just downloads LibreOffice because he doesn't know yet that he is suppose to be tied to MS, the MS juggernaut gets a little weaker.
  • Yes, everyone's always wanted to pay $1000+ for a computer that they don't own that has worse specs than one half the price.

    • Yes, everyone's always wanted to pay $1000+ for a computer that they don't own that has worse specs than one half the price.

      I know Apples computer sales have taken a massive hit this quarter, but this is about Chrome. Who have chromebooks at $200[they are the machine at half the price] and at $1200 [that comes with a 2560 x 1700 touchscreen] attacking both ends of the market. I wonder where HP's chromebooks are going to end up :)

  • The real question is... (Score:3)

    by Rob Y. ( 110975 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:23PM (#43029685)

    The real question is can Native Client become a viable portable GUI toolkit to rival HTML5 for stuff that can't be done easily (or well) with HTML5. If so, then eventually the Chromebook model will fly. Currently, Chrombooks' being limited to HTML isn't good enough for most people's needs. But if and when all the software most people need can be delivered efficiently over 'the web' (with NC expanding what that means), then the migration may well begin.

    Certainly if the QuickOffice NC comes up to LibreOffice standards, MSOffice is in for trouble. Today, Google Docs vs. full blown Office isn't a real comparison.

    Of course, it's all a big if - multiple ifs in fact. Java was supposed to do all this 10 years ago. But things are very different today from where they were 10 years ago, so you can't assume history will repeat itself. Is Native Client any good? Is it open enough that it can be implemented in browsers other than Chrome (or would that inevitably lead to the kind of fragmentation that killed client-side Java)? Who knows, maybe Android will become the portable toolkit devs need, and client apps will remain relatively fat. To me, Native Client seems more flexible. You have the option of running apps thin, and there's nothing to prevent you from using the NC toolkit to run locally-installed apps as well. It's just the latest 'the browser is the OS' model - but maybe this one's good.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tftp ( 111690 )

      Currently, Chrombooks' being limited to HTML isn't good enough for most people's needs. But if and when all the software most people need can be delivered efficiently over 'the web' (with NC expanding what that means), then the migration may well begin.

      Portable use of notebooks is closely linked with their offline use. There are plenty of locations where you cannot, or do not dare to, use WiFi. Offline use of a notebook stops you from using web-based applications. Most notebook uses are comfortable with

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cusco ( 717999 )
        There are plenty of locations where you cannot, or do not dare to, use WiFi.

        Bingo. That right there is why I, personally, need a full-blown laptop for my work. I need to access systems on private networks that don't touch anything outside pretty much every day. I need special tools that no one is going to bother porting to the cloud. I need port sniffers and camera detection programs and intrusion panel configuration tools and, and, and... Do the ladies in our accounting department need that? No,

      • Offline use of a notebook stops you from using web-based applications.

        An HTML app can run fine locally. Use an HTML5 app manifest to cache the app code, and LocalStorage to cache the content.

        And yet apart from the venerable TiddlyWiki and some Firefox extensions, neither of which uses HTML5, none of the browser-based apps I use do this. The problem is no longer technical, rather it's that every bloody company with a web application (including Google) wants you to connect and sign in, so they can abuse your

  • In a word, no. Compatibility. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crankyspice ( 63953 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:25PM (#43029705)

    Over the years, I've kept tabs on, and used to one degree or another, various Office alternatives. Apple's Pages. OpenOffice.org and now LibreOffice. Etc. None of them are 100% compatible with Microsoft's file formats. For the type of work I do (law-and-motion briefs, appellate briefs, etc.), there are strict formatting requirements (e.g., line numbers 1-28 down the left side of the page, double-line borders, specific font and margin requirements, page limits, etc). There's also quite often a need to exchange documents with opposing counsel, for, e.g., joint stipulations. Finally, I need to be able to submit documents to the judge's chambers in Microsoft Word (or WordPerfect .WPD) format, and they have to look right when the judge opens them. The judiciary isn't going to go with OOo anytime soon (they're still slavishly tied to WordPerfect!)...

    None of the 'Office alternatives' has been able to work with a document created by 'real' Office and retain its formatting; likewise, none of the documents I've created using Pages or OOo or ... has looked anything close to what it should (all line numbering/borders gone, etc) when opened in 'real' Office.

    For even moderately complex documents, the alternatives, including Google Docs (a/k/a/ Drive), QuickOffice, etc., do not create or properly work with fully Word compatible documents, and hence I cannot use them in my profession. Office 2011 is a cost of doing business for me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by walterbyrd ( 182728 )

      Okay, for you, for now, QuickOffice won't work.

      But does that mean that QuickOffice cannot gain wide enough acceptance to disrupt ms-office dominance?

      I have a .mil email address. That means I can buy Office 2013 for $10. But I don't. I hate ms-office, and I'm sick of MS's file format scam.

      If I get an office doc that I cannot read, I will send it back, and ask for it to be saved in a more standard format, then re-sent.

      I don't know for sure, but the idea of online docs disrupting ms-office sales does not seem

    • Re:In a word, no. Compatibility. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JDG1980 ( 2438906 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:44PM (#43029855)

      There's also quite often a need to exchange documents with opposing counsel, for, e.g., joint stipulations. Finally, I need to be able to submit documents to the judge's chambers in Microsoft Word (or WordPerfect .WPD) format, and they have to look right when the judge opens them. The judiciary isn't going to go with OOo anytime soon (they're still slavishly tied to WordPerfect!)...

      They won't take PDFs?

    • Re:In a word, no. Compatibility. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iserlohn ( 49556 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @09:18PM (#43030163) Homepage

      Even MS Office doesn't open MS Office files properly. Try opening a DOC file with Word 2007, save it in DOCX, import it it using the filter in Word 2003 and save it back in DOC format again. Yes, things break if you have a moderately complex document. Maybe not as obvious as if you imported it into OOO and then back to DOC, but it's not seamless.

      The problem is that the DOC format sucks. The DOCX format sucks even more. That "standard" was designed so that there would never be any real interoperability between "implementations" unless it was the MS implementation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      How do you cope each time a new version of MS Office comes out and breaks compatibility in similar minor ways in old documents?

    • The judiciary isn't going to go with OOo anytime soon (they're still slavishly tied to WordPerfect!)...
      ....
      For even moderately complex documents, the alternatives, including Google Docs (a/k/a/ Drive), QuickOffice, etc., do not create or properly work with fully Word compatible documents, and hence I cannot use them in my profession. Office 2011 is a cost of doing business for me.

      So there are no formattting issues when a docoument is created in Word and opened in WordPerfect?

  • That's a "No" from me too (Score:3)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:26PM (#43029715) Homepage

    The only thing that can hope to topple MS Office is an open document format. Microsoft has a format in ISO but it's not quite accurate enough to do an independant implementation and has many vague descriiptions of behaviors and/or descriptions of behaviors that references things not part of the office suite. (I'm sure most of us followed the whole ISO certification thing... they "fast tracked" a standard which wasn't complete or accurate and has yet to be fully implemented.)

    So OOXML is still quite proprietary and no one can faithfully implement it based on the ISO speciification alone. And so since MS Office documents are still the defacto standard in business and government, nothing else but Microsoft Office can be used to access the data faithfully.

    • Re:That's a "No" from me too (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JDG1980 ( 2438906 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:51PM (#43029909)

      The only thing that can hope to topple MS Office is an open document format. Microsoft has a format in ISO but it's not quite accurate enough to do an independant implementation and has many vague descriiptions of behaviors and/or descriptions of behaviors that references things not part of the office suite. (I'm sure most of us followed the whole ISO certification thing... they "fast tracked" a standard which wasn't complete or accurate and has yet to be fully implemented.) So OOXML is still quite proprietary and no one can faithfully implement it based on the ISO speciification alone.

      They did eventually describe the stranger parts of the specification (e.g. 'autoSpaceLikeWord95'). The problem is that OOXML is basically an XML-serialized dump of MS Office guts; it wasn't designed from the ground up with interoperability in mind like ODF was, so interoperability is very hard. The spec runs to literally thousands of pages.

      The new version of Office is supposed to include the option to save as "OOXML Strict", which should cut back on some of the deprecated junk (such as VML) in the OOXML spec. But I don't think this will be enabled by default, and even if it was, the old documents will continue to be around for years to come and will still have to be dealt with.

      Google is one of the few organizations on the planet (other than Microsoft) with the resources to produce a good OOXML document reader/writer, so it's a shame that their efforts here have been so lackluster.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Proteus ( 1926 )
      OOXML has some serious problems, but "proprietary" isn't really one of them. OOXML is actually two standards: OOXML Transitional and OOXML Strict. OOXML Strict is, by most accounts, a reasonable standard -- some bits open enough to interpretation that there will still be some problems between implementations, but HTML has the same issues.

      OOXML Transitional, on the other hand, is filled with specified items that are just holdovers from MS's native implementation(s) of Office file formats. This is, more-or

  • Please do not transform /. into a link-bait site.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by boethius ( 14423 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @08:40PM (#43029829)

    PLEASE.

    If you've seen sites like TechCrunch or Business Insider they are fond of writing articles with salacious titles like the one above. The article titles are deliberately inflammatory and custom-designed to create click-through traffic as well as troll-ridden "comments" where people heatedly argue about the merit or lack of merit (almost always the latter) of the article's poorly-researched content. For those reasons I've deliberately chosen not to follow those sites any more.

    The OP assumes so much it's ridiculous. Office is the Sun; QuickOffice is a microscopic dot on the Sun. Of the Fortune 1000 how many, realistically, use Chromebooks? Or Google Apps, even? It's creeping up there surely, but so few it's not even a statistical aberration yet.

    Long-term there is no question more and more office functions will move to the web and they will be used by more and more companies - probably mostly the small, sub-1000-5000 employee companies. The apps are getting very good but there will always be a large percentage of corporations who did not want any apps or data sitting outside the company LAN/WAN, period. In 10-15 years we may laugh about how silly we were to use apps installed on our computers but for the foreseeable future it's MS Office for the VAST majority of large-ish companies and the business community out there.

    • how many, realistically, use Chromebooks? Or Google Apps, even?

      Enough that Google think they can charge http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html [google.com]
      for Google Apps for Business.

    • use Chromebooks? Or Google Apps, even? It's creeping up there surely, but so few it's not even a statistical aberration yet.

      I remember Balmer laughing at Linux being such a small percentage. Its kind of ironic that you would try to do the same in they year Android is set to overtake window as the primary OS, an OS Microsoft Office does not run on, but Google Docs does.

      • >Its kind of ironic that you would try to do the same in they year Android is set to overtake window as the primary OS

        So it's time to lift the monopoly restrictions on Microsoft, don't you think? Why is a company that is not even the primary OS being forced to show a browser dialog in EU while Google is free to abuse Android and the OEMs as it wishes? http://www.zdnet.com/cn/report-google-stops-acer-from-launching-aliyun-phone-in-china-7000004246/ [zdnet.com]

        • So it's time to lift the monopoly restrictions on Microsoft, don't you think?

          Absolutely, Microsoft should simply be banned from having a browser at all, they have set back the internet years, due to their monopoly abuse, and are still subverting open standards for their own ones.

          In fact we should look at Microsoft [continuing] criminal abuses, and say "Never Again", Android, IOS, even tiny OSes Like WindowsRT should have legal protection for replacing the browser, and an option screen to select a few browsers, so it never happens again.

    • > Office is the Sun; QuickOffice is a microscopic dot on the Sun. Of the Fortune 1000 how many, realistically, use Chromebooks? Or Google Apps, even?

      Not long ago, nobody thought Word would replace WordPerfect, for the Legal profession.

      In 1997, Apple stock was $3 a share. Many thought Apple was going bankrupt, and out of business. Now Apple is bigger than Microsoft.

      IBM used to nearly monopolize all business computing.

      Things can change.

  • Consider that the Chromebook is about twice the price of my company's average machine... Including software costs. No.

    Not to mention, our people [collectively] *use* all those features in Office that everyone claims "no one uses".

  • I think I will invoke Betteridge's law of headlines here. The simple answer is no. Quickoffice on Chromebook is a bit like a pocket knife. Microsoft Office is a similar to a kitchen knife. They both have their purposes, and they are designed for different market niches. Yes sometimes there are overlaps. However in this case the overlap is not big enough.

  • Inertia is a heck of a thing. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jtownatpunk.net ( 245670 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @10:00PM (#43030469)

    Many moons ago, I started working for a company that was [cough] lax in their licensing of productivity software. They griped about how much it would cost to get their licenses in order. I got the relevant VeeP to install OpenOffice and try it for a month. He asked me for help on a couple of minor issues during that time and, at the end of the month, he said he'd been able to do everything he needed to do without ever opening the old software once. He was able to open, edit, and save every document and exchange documents within the company and with our clients and vendors with no trouble at all. "Great! So I can develop a plan to transition us to OpenOffice." "No. I just don't feel comfortable using something that doesn't cost money."

    By the time I left the company, our licenses were in order and we had a new VeeP who embraced open source, free, etc. software but it was an uphill battle that shouldn't have been a battle at all.

  • What about Google Docs in browser toppling Office? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spage ( 73271 ) <spage&skierpage,com> on Thursday February 28, 2013 @12:25AM (#43031295)

    Forget the clickbait question posed. As the one (!) commenter on the Slashdot Business Intelligence post asked,

    What advantage does QuickOffice have over the existing Google Docs?

    Google Docs already runs in the browser that's the central focus of Chromebooks/ChromeOS. Offline Google Drive/Google Docs editing has been available on any computer running Chrome since version 20 last year and works well [cnet.com],

    So why is Google screwing around with Native Client (which will never run in other browsers), developing a separate codebase and another UI? There's a part of Google that believes in the open web, and then there are all the groups doing Android and Native Client and Dart and whatever. Either upper management is too weak to corral all the divisions, or they're happy to develop proprietary ecosystems just in case one succeeds the way Android did.

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