Mathew Ingram looks at the issue of new Web-based tools for writing in a Globe and Mail article today, in which he points us to the increasing possibility that Microsoft Office may be threatened by the rapid ascent of and growing profile of these tools and their capabilities.
Microsoft Office facing the war of the words
MATHEW INGRAM
Globe and Mail Update
For almost two decades, companies have been trying to find a way around Microsoft Corp.'s stranglehold on the office software market, with little success.
Canada's own Corel Corp. tried to use WordPerfect as the core of a competitive office suite, but failed to make much of a dent. In the late 1990s, several companies (including Corel) tried to build Java-based suites that would be faster and cheaper, but these also failed.
Now, some companies -- including search giant Google Inc. -- are hoping that the Web can succeed where these other attempts failed.
Google has so far denied any plans to create a Web-based competitor to Microsoft Office, but it took what many see as the first small step in that direction with the acquisition this year of a Web-based startup called Writely.com, whose free service allows users to import, edit and collaborate on Word documents and other text-based files.
Some industry watchers have also speculated that in the wake of Scott McNealy's departure on Monday as chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems Inc. (he becomes chairman), Google and Sun could accelerate their marketing partnership and produce some form of Web-based software suite, using Sun's StarOffice as the engine.
Matthew continues on, introducing readers to the persistent vision and focus of an interesting and rapidly-gaining-notice offering from ThinkFree. In fact, their profile is growing so rapidly that they apologize for the slowness of their server right up front on theeir home page.
Another entrant in the "compete with Microsoft" sweepstakes, South Korea-based ThinkFree Corp., has been around a lot longer than most Web-based Office competitors, and also has a little-known Canadian connection. Founder and chief executive officer T.J. Kang went to high school in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough and got his degree in psychology and computer science from the University of Toronto before getting into the software business in the 1980s.
On Monday, ThinkFree launched a revamped version of its Web-based office suite, which Mr. Kang says offers complete compatibility with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. It also comes with a gigabyte of free on-line storage space. Within 24 hours, the company says more than 10,000 users had registered for the service, which has been available with more limited features since last year.
All that being said, I think that it's clear that blogging and blogging-like derivatives are going to be one of the key ways from hereon out that people express themselves, *talk* to each other and share ideas, information and opinions online, and that it will be increasingly used in and by organizations both large and small.
And that brings me to the continuing conviction that a lightweight, easy-to-use, versatile and very inexpensive (free ;-) tool like Qumana should be one of the tools in every digital citizen's publishing tool belt.
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