Finally! Microsoft to Extend Office to the Browser

Tuesday at PDC, Microsoft announced that its next release of Microsoft Office (Office 14) will include web-based versions of its "most popular" apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Note that these will be "lightweight" versions of these applications, but people will be able to use a browser to create and edit Office documents; collaboration, of course, is a feature as well.

While it's been about a year since Microsoft introduced Office Live Workspace, that is more of a way to collaborate or store documents online, and access them via an existing copy of Microsoft Office (on your PC). This would be more of an answer to Google Docs and other web-based suites.

One of the reasons I have not adopted Google Docs is it's not 100%-compatible. Particularly Spreadsheet-wise, where some functions are missing, or in Docs where the formatting is not always consistent with Microsoft. I would assume Microsoft would ensure compatibility with their desktop version, thus removing that objection.

On the other hand, if they pull another "ribbon" on users by changing the UI, I may just stick with Office Live Workspace.

Microsoft is calling these this suite "Office Web Applications." These versions will come in two flavors: ad-supported and subscription. It's unclear at this point what the differences will be between the two versions, and pricing details are not available yet.

In their press release, Microsoft Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said:

We will deliver Office Web applications to consumers through Office Live, which is a consumer service with both ad-funded and subscription offerings. For business customers, we will offer Office Web applications as a hosted subscription service and through existing volume licensing agreements.

We will show a private technology preview of the Office Web applications later this year.

Microsoft also added they are doing this because they want to provide customers "the technology they need to succeed." The real answer, however, is they need to compete with Google Apps, not just for market share, but to show they can exist in the cloud as well as Google can.

Their solution will be 100% HTML + AJAX, not Silverlight or something proprietary. Also, they will support Firefox and Safari as well as Internet Explorer. No word on Chrome or Opera. And also, no word on release date.