The timing of Google’s announcement of Chrome OS was curious. I don’t mean the fact that Google moved up the post on it by a day when some details leaked out, I mean the fact that they were announcing it on some seemingly random date in July, well before anything is actually ready to show off. Now, we likely know why.
On Monday, Microsoft is set to unveil its plans to counter the attack Google previously had launched on it with Google Docs. Yes, Microsoft Office is going to the cloud. This is something which we all knew was eventually coming, and there is already some limited functionality, but the full details will pour out Monday at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. You can expect the new version of Office, that syncs with the cloud, and the ability to use it in the cloud without any software as well.
Almost immediately following the Chrome OS announcement, Robert Scoble took to his favorite home on the web, FriendFeed, to have one of his, I-know-something-you-don’t-know “discussions.” During the course of those “discussions,” Scoble dropped quite a few hints about what Microsoft planned to announce on Monday, including “Diego, no, it’s one of Microsoft’s primary businesses. Did you know Microsoft has 14 billion dollar businesses?” Guess what that is? Microsoft Office.
It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. And several bloggers already have. And it was especially easy after Scoble ruled out the new browser project Microsoft has code-named “Gazelle.” Scoble also noted that what Microsoft was showing off would run in browsers beyond just IE.
So yes, it’s Office Web that was first talked about at PDC last year.
And it’s possible that Microsoft could unveil that this new web-based Office will reside on the great domain, office.com. That site is clearly going through a transition to new ownership right now, and that would make a lot of sense.
Office is obviously the 900-pound gorilla that Google is attempting to slay with Google Docs, but a 900-pound gorilla with a matching web offering will be a lot tougher. And that’s likely why Google wanted to get its own uppercut in first this week. And it’s a strong one. But now Microsoft is going to have to come up with some answers to how it can counter Chrome OS, rather than focus on talking about the new Office.
[photo: flickr/tipiro]
I guess Google was…… 1st
looking forward to putting all my most valuable data into some fuzzy cloud thing. not!
all the companies hyping the cloud now will hype the begin of a “new privacy era” once they realized that people only put their worthless stuff into the cloud while keeping the really valuable, sensitive data in their local storage.
now guess: where’s the money? at storing worthless stuff or at storing the data people really care about?
And stuff you want to share and collaborate on. And the really important stuff that you want to have access to anytime from anywhere over multiple devices. The local storage will be for the dirty secrets you want to hide away and the less important ones at that…the ones to which quick access in a pinch is not critical..
Not again TechCrunch… “Microsoft is going to have to come up with some answers to how it can counter Chrome OS” – Why? MS couldn’t give a sh*t about a new OS that will only ever be competitive in the small, almost worthless netbook space. All the money is in corporate and businesses will NEVER replace their .doc’s and their .xls’s and upload their valuable private data to an advertiser’s servers.
Microsoft is NOT scared of Google Docs. LOL.
Microsoft will now crush Google Search.
With Bing?
They screwed that up day 1 with that terrible choice for a name.
Bing is a catchy name……..I remember when people thought google was a wacked out name. And Bing will win over google in the end.
I heard Bing is an acronym of:
BING Is Not Google
Seem’s like Microsoft is catching up with open source’s naming like:
GNU — GNU’s Not Unix
WINE — WINE Is Not Emulator
…as always, Microsoft wait’s to what’s innovative then simply follow the trend.
Mac – Windows
Java – C#
PSP – Xbox
iPhone – Zune
Google Docs – Office Live
“…as always, Microsoft wait’s to what’s innovative then simply follow the trend.”
Sure and Apple never ripped off anything from Xerox PARC?
And Google invented online search as well as monetization of search — oh, sorry, they ripped off Overture but hey, who cares, they are geniuses.
Do you know how cloud storage works? Guess not… well the thing is single file is not stored in one place but scatered across the cloud and you alone can get it in correct way.
So basically cloud storage is by far more safer way of storing data. At least when company has huuuge array of servers and storage devices (like Google does).
I don’t know how MS is organised and how many servers there are in their “cloud”… but I’d rather trust Google than MS.
Thing of choice I guess!
not if you lived in China…
Do you know how cloud computing works? I think not.
I don’t get this. So, what would have happened if Microsoft had announced the Office live thing first?
Google could still announce Chrome OS on (say) Tuesday .. and people would be even more excited then — Look, we have an OS for the cloud .. which can run apps like Office live .. so it’s good enough for us.
Yes, Google should not have hired those marketing people from facebook.
The problem is that Google is now an offical OS vendor in direct compition with Windows.
This now allows Microsoft to attack Google Search through thier operation system leverage and not fear anti-compete law suites from Google.
I didn’t think of that…that’s kind of scary, actually.
I like this war hehehe:)
More than the actual war its the build up that has been hyped on the www with stories of Google going to kill MS. Instead as I see, Google and MS have different revenue models. Google is still banking on its web revenues … (advertising is the majority at the moment), whereas Microsoft is still concentrated on software dev and sales with web integration as a offering.
Pretty accurate. Ironically, if they would just stay out of each other’s way (which isn’t goind to be the case), they would both continue to bank mucho dinero in their respective spaces instead of spending tons of R&D bucks trying to outdo each other.
But that is the kind of conversation that needs to happen amongst CEO’s with no one listening…say on a golf course…a la the Robber Barons of yesteryear….
Competition is good for humans. Always has been… always will be.
Something isn’t right in this story. GoogleDocs are by far less important to Google that Windows to MSFT…
yep we need a sense of scale here.
and the internet is big enough for more than 1 players
I am eagerly waiting for Office Live. I have tried it as well as Groove. They provide excellent facilities and which is better that Google Docs (I love Google).
Other point is, Chrome OS won’t be real competition to Windows for some time. Based on Linux, Google will have to make a lot of changes and after few iterations it will be able to take off properly.
Chrome OS is doomed to fail, the netbook market is simply too small, not to mention without 3rd party software, what is the difference between Chrome OS and my smartphone?
It will be hard to unseat Microsoft in the OS arena, almost everything is powered by Windows, from ATM to Phones.
There will be 3rd party software. The difference is that it will be accessed through the browser, whether it is local or not.
You mean like my iPhone. K, got it.
The PR drama continues….wow MS Office cloud.
Interesting stuff!
If office web applications use silverligth microsoft will fail.
somewhat interesting assertion!
It has both Silverlight and Ajax options. Here’s the demo: http://channel9...ice-14-for-Web/
Something as simple as that won’t cause Office Web to fail. Anyone can install Silverlight in a couple minutes. In fact, that would be a very smart move on Microsoft’s part. With the millions of people who will undoubtedly use Office Web they could make a move on Flash with that many Silverlight installs.
“. Anyone can install Silverlight in a couple minutes.”
Not if they’re using Linux.
None of which will choose to use Microsoft Office. And even if they do there is a none-SL version.
I thought the whole point is that Google will put Linux out of business with their new OS, so no need to worry about Linux users anymore
Chrome OS users are Linux users… And because Chrome OS will be open-source many of it’s components will propably be used in other Linux distros.
Google Chrom OS _is_ linux. Are you surprised?
@Scot:
Try again – http://www.mono...t.com/Moonlight
Have you ever actually used Moonlight? Can’t even watch netflix with that.
You are forgetting the key issue: Both Silverlight and Flash are going to be made obsolete by HTML 5. I think Microsoft’s cloud performance to date has been weak. Anyone who uses web based MS Exchange can tell you that it is slower, the calendar feature is cumbersome, compared to Google’s.
If web office runs the way MS Exchange does, then I won’t touch it.
yep absolutely. Where is IE on HTML5?
You say web based Exchange, but that is a server side product. Do you mean web based Outlook? OWA? I actually like OWA quite a bit. My .02.
Agreed, OWA is pretty impressive as a cloud-based *client* to content on Exchange server.
OWA is quite feature rich in various browsers (Chrome, FF, Opera) and in IE it becomes a very close experience to actually using the full Outlook 2007 or 2010 desktop client.
My (Canadian) $0.02…
“But now Microsoft is going to have to come up with some answers to how it can counter Chrome OS”
My advice would be “ignore it”. Its insignificant.
Regardless of how you think Chrome OS will do, you have to admit it was smart of GOOG to announce it’s existence a few days before they were going to be attacked.
Smart and necessary. Hobson’s choice if you ask me!
definitely smart.
One interesting aspect will be if and how they solve the web typography challenge. With no desktop apps it will be difficult for some applications to work only with a few (linux supported) fonts.
Would have been smarter to wait a few days or so after the purported MS Office Cloud initiative to announce Chrome, as by the time MS makes the announcement Chrome will be off the media hype train. By waiting they could have overshadowed some of the hype the MS announcement will likely enjoy.
Google announced Wave during the Bing buzz also.
Free enterprise is fun.
Can’t believe only one person has raised this. For that day you couldn’t see Bing on the web with all the Wave-inspired circle jerking.
Nothing since. Expect similar with Chrome OS. Neither had news worth publishing, other then their existence.
It would have been smart if google had something to show in regards to their Chrome OS, with nothing to show/play around with the interest factor will go down quickly.
If they were going to do it right they would have waited till Sunday or even Monday to make the announcement and supplied us with at least a few screen shots.
Granted they could still release something on Monday, which wouldn’t surprise me since they that is the kind of company they are.
The fact that no one in public has even seen the new OS it’s pretty hard to say that anyone has anything to worry about. Once we see thing thing in action and we can use a beta it’s all just vaporware.
Once it’s actually in Beta it will be there for 10+ years since Gmail was in beta for more than 5 years and that is a pretty small app.
I think we ‘ve all seen google chrome browser. That’s it – it looks to me that there will be nothing else in the chromeOS other than the chrome browser running on an invisible window system
Yes, but that “invisible window system” is the holy grail.
gOS and gOS Gadgets was developed faster than Gmail. Waiting for gOS Cloud 1.0 now…
So Google Android.
I also would like to see something of ChromeOS even if they published concept art of key aspects of the gui. That stuff creates excitement.
Google just entered the vaporware phase, which earns them a -1 in my book. They’ve traditionally let their products do the talking, as opposed to saying “well, we’re GOING to do this……”
Microsoft has played this game for years; Google is a neophyte. In the announcement-before-its-ready game, advantage Microsoft.
Smart? only if you are a PHD engineer and no nothing about business.
Worst case, is that this will provide LEGAL COVER for Microsoft to attach Google Search head on without any anti-compete fear because Google has stupidly announced it is now an OS competitor of Microsoft, without even having an OS! LOL.
You honestly think that was somehow a smart move?
It will take much more business knowledge of how the software industry work then that to take on Microsoft.
An obvious PR ploy is NOT smart. It will hurt Google.
Smart? Perhaps for someone with zero business skills. Like a bunch of Google PHD engineers?
What this does is provide legal cover to Microsoft to now attack Google Search head on without any fear of further anti-compete against is OS and Office monopolies.
Google has announce it is a “major” OS competitor to Microsoft, without an OS for 1 year at least.
Microsoft can easily counter any cloud Office move Google makes and is infact ahead of Google but just not stupid enough to announce unless there is a true strategic reason to.
This will be one of the worst moves in Silicon Valley history, right up there with Scott McNeally killing Sun by wasting time on StarOffice!
Or perhaps, all those Sun PHD engineers now work at Google???? LOL.
This way they give prospective programmers a heads up. Google plans on open-sourcing the code before the end of the year; they would have had to announce the OS then if they hadn’t announced it now.
Yeah, I wonder what this does to the EU browser conversation too. MSFT can say, “See, that is why we aren’t going to be distributing other browsers with Windows7″.
Alex,
Exactly. And remember other dumbass legendary moves like Philipe Kahn of Borland, when it was a rising star, decide to buy the fast dying Ashton Tate/Dbase franchise.
Dumb, dumb.
-
Why is the link to http://workspac...live.com/en-us/ used to assert there has been some testing? You can use this place already for document storage and simple collaboration.
If MS Office goes to the clouds, how would MSFT ever profit from it’s office solutions suite? And wouldn’t this also directly affect the sales of their Windows platforms?
Good for the common man though.
Oh M$ will have a retail scheme for their cloud products don’t worry you’ll get to pay for every little bit of it.
Agreed, cloud monetization is already in the works – I believe that there is an HBR article on this very issue (of monetizing the cloud)…
Think cost-recovery from the mainframe days (compute cycles) … CPC as in cost per character, …
don’t worry about how to make money ; get the stickiness and eyeballs in first!
Chrome OS == meh. If you want a free os that runs easily and has a good browser, get Ubuntu. Office in the cloud – well if it works as well as Office on the desktop and I get mac / pc portability with one license I’m sold.
I have tried Live Office and in theory it is supposed to do most of the things one would expect from online office but in practice it was such a pain to use, any simple action required so many steps and clicks and was failing to perform most of them. I want MS to stand against this Google giant but i’m afraid this new MS thing will not work properly.
Anyway, we-users are the winners in this fight anyway.
But, that still gives MS an option to deliver the final punch
Ahhh, so thats the reason Chrome OS was announced Microsoft have their own product to launch, the battle of the Giants is back on.
Microsoft has had enough money from me as it is so its nice for a company like Google to ruffle their feathers.
The attempt from Microsoft to take it into the cloud is great, but there isn’t much mention of cost [yet.] Remember, many people started using Google Docs because it was free. The offline Gears enhancement was a bonus.
If Microsoft is to compete with Google it needs to look at the pricing structure as being the biggest barrier to entry. But as Office is a 14 billion dollar business, it will be hard to give it up.
Don’t discount Google just yet..
Google or Microsoft…..!!
we need good from both…
I <3 the cloud.
But honestly, I would love to be able to use office through the interwebz. Google docs is far to basic in my view, so assuming that the cloud office a)has better functionality than Google docs, and b) it doesn’t cost too much money (we all know how much you love money, M$…..thats why there is a $ in your abbreviation), I’m totally on board with this. And I’m totally for becoming less dependent on Google’s services…..between these to “evil empires”, I feel more comfortable with M$ for some reason.
Don’t most people love money? I know I do.
I don’t love money. Money loves me and I’m not one to reject love.
Money and I are on the outs. We haven’t made up yet.
I don’t see why this has to be a war. If Crome OS delivers what it promises, it will be a great tool for highly portable computing platform for business. Likewise, if MS does a great job to ensure that Office in the cloud is truly cross-browser friendly, that the right functionality is there, and doesn’t screw up any legal issues that handcuff users or business, then this could be a great partnership. Let’s hopt that both MS and Google view it this way. A partnership would certainly be better for us users to than a war would.
Google had no choice but to announce chrome, there was nothing smart about it.
As for what else could Microsoft be up to? you haven’t seen anything yet.
I’m all for google services, but the idea that google docs can compete with Office is silly.
The apps, in general, are frustrating to use for anything beyond the most basic needs. They are GREAT at those basic online needs… but… For any documents that require actual sharing and collaboration we use Dropbox anyway.
In the end… you still use office to finish a doc up.
How long will this 900-pound Gorilla take to download into Silverlight?
cloud requires infrastructure … most of the world, even much of usa, doesn’t have enough
North Korea will Cast a Long Shadow on the Cloud…
Now that rogue hackers are looking to slay US e-businesses like Amazon.com – and the WashingtonPost.com – will businesses reconsider the beauty of products that place their data “in the cloud” far away from home?
Not that internal servers cannot be hacked, but I don’t see lots of conversation around the topic that is most pressing for business:
Cyber Security.
If GOOG really wanted to disrupt the MS announcement, they should have waited till Monday to announce the Google OS.
MG: Why do you mock Robert and use his hints at the same time? Moreover, the discussions on FF are quite useful, so I don’t understand mocking them neither.
I think it was a smart move on Google’s part
Do not underestimate Google in this matter of developing a new OS at this point of time . The industry need a new and user friendly OS and Google has been working in the past about developing and now they have officially announced it . Microsoft has done a great job with OS till date but most of the GUI is adopted from MAC OSX, SUSE Linux, Debian and other flavours which are not much used by home computer users . This gives us a feel that Microsoft has come up with something new but 50 % of it is already available in other OS .
With cloud computing Google was the first to get it with partnering with major industry players agreeing together. Now Google has joined with Adobe for its new OS and Intel for its hardware market.
Google has also announces its coming up with a new security architecture which wont need an anti-virus.
The bottom line is if Google can develope a New refreshing user friendly GUI then it has the potential to dominate the market either its netbook or Desktop .
I like TechCrunch but we have to remember that it’s a magazine/journal/news site and as such it is successful if it creates rivalries where there may not be any.
From the original details, Google OS is another Linux distro with more emphasis on Google’s browser-based services which may jump to the OS just like Adobe AIR does (I’ve tested AIR on Windows, OSX and Ubuntu) and Silverlight is supposed to do.
But framing Google Chrome OS as an Adobe killer wouldn’t create the traffic that a Google-Microsoft war does, especially since you could still run AIR on Google OS & Windows.
I waiting OS from Google, given that my expectations are high
Why isn’t this post titled:
There Is a NUCLEAR BOMB Microsoft Is Dropping, AND ITS MADE OF CLOUD.
Because TC has a withering google myopia – only they could show absolutely positively nothing, AT ALL, and have their offer called “a strong one”. Hilarious.
have to say cloud talk is over hyped, mainly by the media and bloggers. If you have sensitive information you wont be storing it in the cloud, simply becuase you are not 100% certain where that content is (which for some businesses means a violation in compliance). This means, while google docs sounds great its main aim can only be at home users (how many use documents in that way in any case???) Office in the cloud with its online and on local machine implementation provides simply a better solution…..
As for Chrome OS…well its Linux isnt it with some google badging…I think Windows 7 will have no issues with that……
It’s great that MS is going to enter the cloud market. However, how good will this be and how much are they going ot charge for it? If they charge too much, then it won’t kill google docs or open office. If it’s good and free, then it might kill their own product.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
Anyone else who’s got the feeling that Redmond did wake up lately? Like they’ve accepted the competition and not to just sit around?
If that gizelle product is a plugin-version of ms office, they ‘d better make it work on Chrome, because ChromeOS will rock 2010.
isn’t it funny how Google is becoming the OS guys and Microsoft turning to a web company?
LOL@google becoming the OS guys. You are delusional.
Especially if they make the plug-in mechanism work in this Chrome retard.
Google Docs are incredibly mediocre right now, except for simple collaboration. Office in the Cloud will definitely hurt Google a lot more than chrome OS will hurt MS. This chrome OS will not be a threat to microsoft for a long, long time, like 5 years if ever.
I think Microsoft is far better professional in terms of the product they release. I see Google products more like the pirated copies of Microsoft. And obviously pirated copies are cheap / free. However, Original remains Original.
Each iteration M$ Office is a bigger and more complicated suite of software. The average user is familiar with only a sprinkling of its features. Why can’t M$ just keep it simple and focus on the tools that Joe The Office Guy uses on a daily basis and perfect them? They keep pushing Cadillac Software to Hundai users.
Because there’s no such Joe. There’s Joe the slave of his boss who tells him what to do.
LoL
joe the office guy wants a cadillac. all you google fanboys want a sissy telsa!
What’s “going to the cloud”? Internet/App lingo is not my forte.
It means everything will be hosted on servers run by the companies, rather than on your computer.
I disagree. “Cloud Computing” does not mean web based applications. And this article has misused the term “Cloud Computing”. MS Office online does not mean it will be cloud computing.
Cloud computing should be thought of from an engineering perspective. When building an application, do you want to host your own web server? Do you want to hire your own IT staff? Do you want to buy more servers as your site grows? If yes, then you’re not using cloud computing.
Alternatively, Cloud computing services (provided by companies like Amazon) allow you to make applications by leveraging hardware, IT, bandwidth provided by them. You don’t need to pay for your own hardware, you use their hardware on an as-needed basis. It’s a utility like water or electricity. You pay only for what you use.
An online application may or may not use cloud computing. But it shouldn’t matter to the end user. Who cares? All that matters is if the applications works. Only engineers care about what’s under the hood.
“going to the cloud” is a work in progress, a term in a transient state. Ultimately, it’s what happens when you die.
…and so the angels sing… xD
I’m assuming Google will not bundle their Chrome browser with their Chrome OS and give Microsoft, Firefox, and Opera equal access to distributions in PCs?
Right.
I am sure that all of MS’s (nonexistent) experience in building web apps will make their cloud office a real winner. Combine that with them making their online office app free for everyone and interoperable with other companies apps and it will be a sure thing.
I give it a 15% chance of being any good.
OMG, MS awakens. Google has one really successful product: search; one moderately successful product: mail and one semi successful product: apps.
Google has a 10 year headstart on MS, but instead of building serious software, they wantered around building childish stuff like street view, google sets, etc.
Using Javascript to build an office suite is a joke, JS is a joke! There is no productivity in JS.
Now lets see them take on the big boys. Sell your google stock my dears.
Rehan, I am not an admirer of GOOG, like at all. But the browser architecture is smart enough. Also, think about the p-code when you see what in fact are launching as virtual machines within their browser container and you will get an idea what they want to accomplish.
Without that JScript IS a joke of course.
It wasn’t all that random a date.
07/08/09…it seems like the kind of cute thing Google would like.
I hadn’t thought of Office.com before. Office.com is now registered by Marksmen in Glendale, CA. They are an IP Protection, Brand Protection specialist. Guess who they are most connected with (via LinkedIn)
If you guessed Microsoft, you’re right.
Great to see the OS space now heat up…
@ Andy
Waiting…
Thanks for putting my photo to illustrate this excellent article!
cool!
I love cloud!
Sorry, Try again.