Microsoft's Google Docs competitor to go final by year-end

Microsoft is preparing to move Office Live Workspace, the online storage/collaboration service adjunct to Office, from beta to final before the end of this year.

Microsoft officials said on September 3 that as of a week ago, the public beta of Office Live Workspace had been downloaded by one million customers. Microsoft released the public beta six months ago.

Microsoft's goal is to release the final version of Office Live Workspace -- the product Microsoft has that is most comparable to Google Docs -- in 2008, said Kirk Gregersen, Director of Prouct Management for Office Live Workspace and Office Consumer and Small Business. He noted that Microsoft currently supports 11 languages with Office Live Workspace and would like to get that number closer to the 37 it supports with Office before it takes the beta tag off the service.

Gregersen said that Microsoft has been surprised about the ways that testers are and aren't using Office Live Workspace. Originally, Microsoft thought many users, especially students, would use the service to gain remote access to their Office documents. Instead, users are tending to use Office Live Workspace more for collaborative/team access to a single document.

(Microsoft officials continue to cite this usage pattern in explaining why the company hasn't released a Webified version of Office. Do users really want to create large text files, spreadsheets and presentations "on the Web" as opposed to on their PCs? Microsoft says no -- and I feel the same. As I've said before, I think users are choosing Google Docs more because they feel Office is overpriced than because they want to create documents in the cloud.)

A reminder: Office Live Workspace is not a Web-based version of Microsoft Office; it is an adjunct to Office. The service can be used from a PC, kiosk or other Web-access point with or without Office installed; (All you technically need is an Internet Explorer or Firefox browser.) Office Live Workspace includes a rudimentary online word processor called Web Notes; a “spreadsheet” that (at least so far) doesn’t do calculations called Web Lists; and the ability to access, view and comment on documents — both your own and those created by others who grant permission

Microsoft most recently refreshed the beta of Office Live Workspace in August, and added a few, new user-suggested features at that time, including multi-file upload and an activity-pane view.