Monday, 25 September 2006

Microsoft Considering Free Version of Microsoft Works

Microsoft may offer a free, ad-supported version of some of its productivity tools online. Microsoft's Office Live has been rolled out with online versions of the e-mail program Outlook, Web-building programs and other tools, but without the core of the suite Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This shift in strategy is spurred by Google's entry into the same space.

Microsoft’s strength is its experience of its office software. Google’s Writely is rather minimalist when compared with Word's feature set, but where Google surpasses Microsoft is in collaboration features. Users of Writely are able to make revisions and share documents amongst each other, whereas Word users still have to send files back and forth. Microsoft plans to address this limitation in its Office Live software, but then again, it won’t be free.

The earlier versions of Writely and the follow-on efforts to use Google Calendar to challenge Outlook and to produce an inexpensive spreadsheet to challenge Excel likely don't amount to enough to prompt Microsoft to change its overall strategy, according to JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartnenberg.

"There's still the question of how well a Writely or other Web-based program can be monetised," Gartenberg said.