They're Swinging for Office, But It's Hard To Knock Out the Champ
Google apparently can't get enough of trying to compete with Microsoft on the
productivity-suite front. Not long after
launching
Google Apps, a pretender to Microsoft Office's throne, the Silicon Valley
powerhouse has
slid
Sun's StarOffice into its Google Pack mega-download. And Google's not alone
-- Adobe is
making
noise about office suites, too.
Of course, other competitors, such as OpenOffice, have been around for a while,
trying hopelessly to unseat Microsoft's entry in the race to provide word processors
and spreadsheet programs to corporate and consumer users. Everybody's got a
message (we almost wrote "gimmick" in that sentence). Competitor suites
are either cheaper than Office, or are browser-based thin-client options, or
are free...or something. What they all have in common, though, is single-digit
market share.
We're not saying it'll be that way forever. After all, Microsoft still hasn't
done much to move Office out of the desktop realm and into the software-as-a-service
"cloud," given that Office Live isn't really a "Live" version
of Office but instead is a suite of apps for small business. And, if anything,
Microsoft hurt Office more than anybody else by making
Office 2007 look completely unfamiliar to users.
But the reason Redmond's competitors aren't making more headway against the
Office juggernaut is because Office is the absolute baseline of technology for
the average information worker. Listen to what people at your office or your
clients' offices say: A document isn't just a document; it's a "Word document."
A spreadsheet is inevitably an "Excel spreadsheet." And a presentation?
Forget about it -- it's just a "PowerPoint" now, plain and simple.
Yeah, there are lots of issues with functionality and especially with interoperability
as far as competitors to Office are concerned, and they're real problems for
non-Microsoft offerings. But, more than anything else, until Google and Adobe
can find away to shift Word, Excel and PowerPoint out of the "Kleenex"
or "Xerox" (or even "Google," oddly enough) brand-recognition
mode, Microsoft will remain heavyweight champ in the productivity-suite ring.
Have a take on the power of the Office brand or a review of Office 2007? I'll
happily read your thoughts at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/15/2007 at 1:21 PM