New product press releases unencumbered by the complexities of releasing actual software set off alarm bells. And when those press releases are so boastful as to suggest that the (unlaunched) product can hurt a competitor’s $20 billion revenue stream, the alarm bells get much louder.
So with alarm bells screaming, Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia announces he’s going to war with Microsoft by (someday) launching an online version of Office. The fact that Bhatia got rich when Microsoft bought Hotmail for $400 million in 1997 only adds additional drama to the story.
The as yet unlaunched product, called Live Documents (see our review from a year ago when the product was significantly different), will be a Flash based online suite that competes with Word, Excel and Powerpoint. The company will also release plugins that work with the desktop Office software that lets users store and collaborate on documents online.
If this sounds a bit like Google Docs and Zoho, that’s because it is. The differentiating factors for Live Documents, besides the fact that it’s built on Flash (Google Docs and Zoho are Ajax applications), is that they are promising feature matches with Office 2007 and they have the offline plugin component.
It’s not clear that Flash is a better (or worse) interface than Javascript, but it isn’t much of a competitive advantage either way. And we note that Zoho has their own plugins for the desktop Office. Zoho also has an offline version of their product via Google Gears; its likely that Google is not far behind.
CTO Sumanth Raghavendra says Live Documents “break’s Microsoft’s proprietary format lock-in.” But in reality Live Documents has absolutely nothing new to offer users based on what we’ve been told so far. And as Dan Farber notes, they aren’t yet releasing the product and don’t even have screen shots to share with us.
There are additional red flags as well. As Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu notes, Bhatia is making a big mistake by estimating Live Documents revenue based on taking market share from Microsoft. Bhatia says “If Live Documents makes 1 per cent of Microsoft Office revenues, then we would earn USD 200 million a year. If Live Documents makes 10 per cent of Microsoft Office revenues then our revenues would be USD 2 billion a year in the next three to four years.” Vembu notes Guy Kawasaki and others who’ve warned against this kind of analysis.
So far Live Documents is nothing more than bullshit and smokescreens. That may have been the way to do business when Bhatia co-founded Hotmail in 1996, but his software is going to have to survive on its own in a hyper competitive marketplace when it actually launches. Hubris alone won’t do it. We’ll see if he can pull off a second win, or if Bhatia is, in the end, just another one trick pony. So far, I’m underwhelmed.
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It’s doubtful that online apps can ever compete with OS based office suites. Why bother when you have Open Office as a faster, likely more stable (and free) offering.
Even with google apps, your productivity relies on a server that’s out of your control for both speed, reliability and security. I wouldn’t touch this with a bargepole.
This is not Sabeer Bhatia’s first project after Hotmail, ( http://blogeverywhere.com, http://arzoo.com ) though none of them have had any serious success.
Run Forrest Run! Gump Software!
That horrible flash intro, music and cheezy stock images turned me off instantly.
wow, this must mean that sabeer bhatia’s run out of miss india. and bollywood award gigs. sad.
The fact that this guy doesnt want to buy the livedocuments.com domain name from the adsense parking lot it is now and go with one with a dash in it is pretty telling to me. If he expects to become big, why wouldnt he spend the money now to purchase a proper domain name so that ppl interested wont be going to an adsense page in looking for his site?
DOUBT IT
Gump Software!
So far all comments are valid and insightful. I think it all comes down to user preference. I use OpenOffice.org and Google Docs - I always will. There’s no real need on my end to change or switch. This leaves me wondering what the motivating factor would be for someone to switch or use the new technology in the forst place. The hype from the website. The mere mention of it here on techCrunch coupled with the article I was reading which landed me here to begin with might be best served on some obscure forum where people might care a little more. Not really press worthy since the product is not even launched yet. The fact that the product is only a idea at this point makes me think it always will be just an idea. I appreciated the comment above about the domain name with the dash. That right there sums it all up from my perspective.
I am very surprised if Microsoft is just going to sit back and allow this Product to use the ‘Live Documents’ title and the tagline - ‘The future of Office’.
Mr Bhatia is playing a very dangerous but cunning game in making all Web Users believe that Live Documents must be an official Microsoft release.
Plus doesn’t the possible failing of this Live Documents Suite besmirch any future official ‘Live Documents’ release from Microsoft themselves.
Wow! Pretty brutal… Are you still smarting from your own oversight / press stunt?
Cloud computing will prevail if and only if they partner up with offline products such as MS Office. I guarantee you won’t beat ‘em, but you should provide a free online suitor.
ZoHo & Google Docs are both great products, but they have a long way to go before you can say they are standalone alternatives to MS office.
I’m kind of surprised a company as big as this is choosing/using a domain name with a dash, can’t they use the non-dash counterpart instead?
a non-dash is much more highly desireable and marketable than its dashed counterpart
kind of off topic, but oh well
Okay, I took a look at the site and it made me laugh at this Hotmail millionaire. Once Steve Ballmer & MS get a hold of this guy, they’ll be asking for their $400 Million back in the way of one fat lawsuit.
For all of you who didn’t check out the websites, go there. Pay attention to the use of MS trademarks all over the place including the knockoff icon logos for Word, Excel & Powerpoint.
Mike, you’re a former lawyer, what are your thoughts?
…
What about Buzzword?
I agree with #13 Compute in the Cloud and #9 Moe, in fact made the point here earlier: Bite the Hand that Feeds You?
All that said, they have an “IP Discalimer”:
Office, Windows, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are the trademarks and/or trade names of Microsoft Corporation. Other trademarks and/or trade names are property of their respective owners. No claim whatsoever is made in relation to these trademarks and/or trade names and/or logos. The use of these trademarks and/or trade names and/or logos on this site is for the proper guidance of the users, considering the convenience and familiarity of the user in associating the trademarks and/or trade names and/or logos with their respective owners and not for any advertisement or establishing any connection of this site or the application software provided on this site with the above mentioned trade marks and/or trade names and/or logos and /or their respective owners.
I still think it’s intentinally confusing, and the IP disclaimer (hidden in a pop-up window) os just CYA.
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You guys are being needlessly brutal for what is essentially an idea, don’t know why!
On the other hand something else is obviously going on here -maybe their simply raising a flag, the fact that this has got covered shows the importance of the history -maybe they are working on the tech, ready to simply pith-back to microsoft (without even a need for future ms re-branding.
On a more general cloud-computing note, we all know it will eventually happen, part of the resultant consequence of “web 2.0″ DNA.
I think the companies that will make the biggest impact are the ones that take the masses across the rubicon, but in doing so and having to make the investments they’ll need, they’re unlikely to be the largest players
Those investments will need to be evolutionary hybrids (silver/air/java/gears) packaged in hardware, and the “masses” will expect something in return if they’re not getting “physical” (local) applications (they’ll feel they’re being ripped off, or tied into a mobile-phone-type contract.
Once most are familiar with the differences and technology, then the market will be able to be developed by many fractured suppliers using almost disposable hardware. When things are web/software-based, open standards means there will be less uniquness and need for an overall virtual monopoly.
The winners may just as well be apple and tesco/wallmart.
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak.
This idiot doesn’t know the difference between earnings and gross revenue - doubt he can run a company to compete with the Borg.
I dream Microsoft’s next OS will be only a browser…rest all will be inside it
…
after all what else do we need these days besides a browser! atleast I dont need anything else!
Michael,
Sumanth from the Live Documents team here…
Thanks for the post - I was planning to contact you to update you on our service but I guess you beat us to the punch by writing about it first!
Firstly, your quip that it is nothing more than “bullshit and smokescreens” is a little uncharitable considering that you yourself had called our service as “powerful stuff” when you had reviewed our first incarnation around a year back - http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....ful-stuff/
As you might recollect, at that point of time, your main feedback was that we should look to build bridges with online Office suites like Google docs and Zoho - well, we did have a look at those solutions and quite frankly, found them underwhelming in many ways and beyond that integration was complex because their APIs were severely limited in many dimensions. Therefore, we decided to build our own Online Office suite and the technology preview we released this week is the result of that effort. Incidentally, we started building our solution using AJAX/DHTML too but soon hit so many roadblocks with regard to the kind of functionality and user experience that we wanted to offer, that we had to explore alternative and we found Flash/Flex to be a far more powerful platform.
Regarding how we are different from Google docs/Zoho, obviously others have asked the same question and I have responded in this blog - http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9822566-16.html
Finally, regarding the market quip, the journalist asked Sabeer what the market size of the opportunity was and that was the context of the number provided - we realize that it is meaningless to talk of percentage shares of this market and we didn’t - what was published was the journalist’s impressions and not ours!
Hope that helps clarify things to some extent - in the final analysis, people using our solution will tell us whether it is indeed useful or just bullshit but perhaps, you would have cared to take a look yourself prior to writing us off!
Cheers,
Sumanth
Trick pony.
Nice way of putting it. This man has been announcing products to be launched for quite sometime now. Seems to be having a finger in everything. Looks like he does not want people to forget him. He either appears on Indian television as the most eligible bachelor or seems to be announcing launches of products “yet to launched”.
Will somebody at Microsoft just sue this guy and end his ego trip.
Just to play devil’s advocate on the negative posts concerning trademark violations and domain names, this guy might simply not have been able to strike a reasonable deal with the owner of livedocuments.com. Just because it’s an adsense page doesn’t mean the owner is willing to part with livedocuments.com for less than $100 million. Some people are unimaginably ridiculous about the value of their domain names.
I would hope Sabeer understands the potential litigation issues with his choice of names. Assuming he does and his lawyers have this covered, then live-documents.com is a great domain name assuming the above is correct regarding the non-hyphenated version.
I’ll just go ahead and call “BS” right now. This won’t hurt MS Office one bit. This site will likely fade away and die in 2-3 years. Move along…nothing to see here.
Oh! I have the vapors!
Wake up Steve Ballmer!
It’s not that this app will kill you, but its a call to arms that the end of proprietary software is near. Software should be free, it’s time to open the flood gates!!!!!
.
Live documents is not a new product. It was launched in Sep 2006 and that time it was touted as online collaboration tool - more here : http://www.pluggd.in/2007/11/l.....er-bhatiya
yawn…
I can’t predict if this will be successful or not. the only thing I know is the domain name is a huge mistake. dashes are only used in crappy, slimy, cheap, knock off, bad websites.
he MUST change it before he goes any further.
hmmm flash?!
flash seems like a bad idea.
I’ve been lovin google docs lately. Props to the docs team, those guys have a nice simple product.
Sumanth - “you would have cared to take a look yourself prior to writing us off!”
If you led with a product instead of a press release and ridiculous claims of potential revenue, I would have. I haven’t written you off, but you made some fairly aggressive promises, and set expectations way beyond what you are likely to be able to meet.
Personally I can’t wait for the product to come out, Google docs and all the other online office apps have really crappy UI’s. Heck I would prefer using notepad over what google provides. Frankly I don’t care about google or MS or anyone else winning or loosing I care only about how the product enhances my workflow and how well it integrates with current systems and its growth in the future with newer versions. Live-documents promises all of that, so lets wait and see. I am sick of ppl saying google this MS evil facebook saint Sabeer arrogant, who flippin cares just talk facts related to the products.
hotdocs?
Looks like Sabeer Bhatia emptied his $400M cocaine stash.
I have been reading techcrunch for a while and my only wish to startups - Avoid being techcrunched! I think its far safer to not being reviewed here .
I don’t like Flash, I prefer HTML.
@20, probably … Silverlight … is their platform…
What does TechCrunch have against Buzzword? Anything “personal”?
Buzzword is the real thing here; much more advanced than Gdocs, while free, online, and soon to be on AIR, offline. I really don’t understand why it doesn’t get mentioned in these types of posts.
he can’t of seen the future then… I doubt it will be able to match the silverlight/.net3.5 version that Microsoft’s office team is building…
I am guessing all this but looking at Microsoft’s tech direction it makes sense that they would need a silverlight like product to do office online without the javascript lag. Also I wager when they do it will blow googleDocs out of the water, people might not like MS but they do create a damn good office package and have the most experience in doing it.
Michael, you must have had a bad day or a serious bone to pick with these guys. You rarely use profanity, and choosing to use it here is just plain odd.
There seems nothing inherently wrong with this live documents stuff, just another “coming soon”. That is pretty darn common. And from the guy who practically came up with web based mail, give him a little credit.
41, yep, MS will definitely do a silverlight flavor of Office. But, they have the basic problem so nicely outlined in the the “Innovator’s Dilemma” book. Namely, they will have a very hard time because they have their Office cash cow to protect. So they will either have to price it too high or cripple it’s features, both in an effort to justify why you should shell out a fortune for desktop Office.
This will in itself create an opportunity for a blatant Office ripoff like this.
Is it just me or does that logo look like it was ripped from Quicktime? I don’t mean to fling wild accusations at Sumanth and team, but the likeness is uncanny.
Is this just an MS office rip-off with a photoshopped Quicktime logo? Is this an experiment to see how quickly you can get sued?
Just throwing that one out there.
“If Live Documents makes 1 per cent of Microsoft Office revenues, then we would earn USD 200 million a year. If Live Documents makes 10 per cent of Microsoft Office revenues then our revenues would be USD 2 billion a year in the next three to four years.”
Thanks for the math lesson Sabeer. Duh!!!
Don’t know why people hate MS.. I found that they’re a great company, and have done too many good works for mankind.
On the other hand, Firefox’s half-hearted efforts are just so lousy.
Businesses are unlikely to upload mission critical documents to a web-service. If I want to share documents, I’ll use Scribd. If I want to work on documents in a collaborative environment, I’ll use Google Docs. In all other circumstances, I have my laptop with me. This “problem” has been solved.
Sidebar: At least have the music loop correctly in the Flash player. Ugh.
Ouch… you just buried him alive. But I agree that citing the 1% market share number is incredibly naive- it could only be worse if China was mentioned in the same sentence. Any VC will shoot down that kind of statement the minute it comes out. How many of these web 1.0 guys were for real? It makes you wonder.
I agree with @42. Michael, it sure sounds like you are being pretty brutal on these guys, though I don’t entirely disagree with your analysis. Flash installation is perennial pain and an app in flash doesn’t sound like the right way to go (though Adobe is pushing this approach), at least for now.
I don’t understand why they are thinking to even bother with web based office applications. What they should be doing is sticking to their niche of improving the office collaboration experience - that is cool stuff and what users are interested in.