I use Google Docs quite a bit - not exclusively, but more and more. One reason is the built-in ability to collaborate in real time with others on a document. I bet this feature cuts the time spent collaborating on a doc by at least 50%, when compared with other ways like track changes.
furthermore, Google Docs is not exactly what I would call a feature-rich word processor - it's much more basic than openoffice, but it gets the job done. and where OO does an OK job of importing and exporting to .doc format, google docs really messes up when I've tried to import any .doc that is even moderately formatted.
All this to say that I think the task ahead of Microsoft is much more than simply slapping a free (if ad-supported) version of Word or Works online if their goal is to take the air out of google docs' balloon. if real-time collaboration is the online word processing "killer app," I wonder if there is an inherent trade-off between feature richness and effectively delivering real-time collaboration? It would seem to me that the more elaborate one party to a collaboration gets in the formatting, etc., the longer it would take the servers on the back end to reconcile the changes and display them to others...
Colleague Mary Jo Foley, who does the All about Microsoft blog, reports that Microsoft may well be working on a free version of Microsoft Works.
I’ve always thought of Works as a poor man’s Microsoft Office. There’s an older version of Word, a PowerPoint viewer (not a PPT creator), addy book, database, calendar, etc.
Assumed to be Microsoft Works 9.0, this version could be software-based, hosted, or both. A hosted version would be ad-supported.
Mary Jo makes a valid point that a free Works could signify a competitive strike by Microsoft against Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
From my own experience, I see some other battlefields for a free, ad-supported Microsoft Works.
I don’t have Office on one of my laptops. Didn’t want to spend the dough. When I need to write on the road, I either go to our Web-based blogging tool (as I am doing presently) perform a major retro move back to the built-in Wordpad, or use my OpenOffice Writer.
That’s OpenOffice Writer at the top of this post.
OpenOffice is pretty good, and it is free. In OpenOffice Writer, docs created therein are savable in W9rd’s .doc format, but aren’t total clones of documents created in Word. Some of my non-blogging clients have told me this.
But hey tell you what. If there was a free- even ad-supported- online version of Microsoft Works with built-in Word, I’d certainly use it on my notebook.
Would you?
