Google and Microsoft, while battling for your desktop, may reduce bloatware
Google and Microsoft, while battling for your desktop, may reduce bloatware
Today was a nice day, and no, I don't mean that the birds were twittering near my window at dawn. I came to my office and tucked into some cake that a colleague had baked for her son's birthday. After eating it, I visited Google News and found an announcement that really took the cake.
Microsoft, which is fighting with Google on various fronts the mobile (Windows Mobile vs. Android), the desktop (Windows vs. Chrome OS), the browser (Internet Explorer vs. Chrome) and the search engine space (Google vs. Bing) to mention just a few has just said that it is offering its cash cow Office for free on the Web.
In some ways, it shows how nimble Microsoft is and how much it plans ahead. Right now, the main way that Google competes with Microsoft is in the search engine space, but Microsoft knows that if there is one company that is capable of threatening its unassailable position, it is Google, and is getting ready to strike back.
Clever move?
In some ways, this move could put Microsoft in some danger because Office is a very important part of the Redmond giant's arsenal. In fact, according to Reuters, the Office division rang up operating profit of $9.3 billion on sales of $14.3 billion in the first three quarters of the software maker's current fiscal year.
So, offering a free version on the Web may mean that you don't have to buy Office, and this could end up denting Microsoft's money-making ability. In fact, according to the WSJ, Microsoft's decision to offer free Office software online could put at risk as much as $4 billion in revenue.
So, the question is this why are they doing it? One reason could be because Microsoft is smarting under the poor economy. The company, which has shown record growth in the past like, for instance a revenue of $15.84 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2008, an 18 per cent increase over the same period of the prior year is now suffering. In fact, for the first time since 1986, since the company went public, its revenues fell by 6 per cent for the quarter that ended on March 31, 2009.
Good for users
But no matter why the company is doing this, one thing is clearu2014we may get more nimble products. This is because Web versions of software cannot be as bloated as the stuff that sits on your 500GB hard disk. These software products need to load fast on your Internet connection, and so such software is usually carefully optimised.
But with the online world, one crucial thing is downtime. In July 2008, Google Docs was down for the better part of an hour, and such disruption on anybody's part could prove costly. One of the things that one can be thankful for in the offline world is that, even if your Internet connection is down, you can still work with the offline apps on your hard disk.
But of course, with the online version of any application suite, you are saved the bother of having to do chores like install and backup, so you have some benefits there too. You can't have your cake and eat it too!
QUICK TAKE
>>Microsoft is responding to Google's challenge
>>The company is going to give a free online version of Office
>>This should give users more choice
For and against
>>Pro: Browser applications typically require little or no disk space on the client, upgrade automatically with new features, and integrate easily into other web procedures, such as email and searching.
>>Con: Standards compliance is an issue with any non-typical office document creator, which causes problems when file sharing and collaboration becomes critical.
Source: Wikipedia
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