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Most modern businesses run on MS Office. For Google to really gain market share, they need to be able to run heavily formatted MS Powerpoint slides and Excel wo
by hodder 9y ago
Most modern businesses run on MS Office. For Google to really gain market share, they need to be able to run heavily formatted MS Powerpoint slides and Excel workbooks with VBA macros with no pain for compatibility.
Some small companies can currently go with Chromebooks and the Google office suite (assuming they don't share many files externally), but for big business the compatibility needs to be there to switch from MSFT. Big businesses can't afford to refactor every single spreadsheet in existence to make the switch. Currently I have 2 Excel sheets, a Word doc, and Outlook open. Excel specifically is the most difficult to port elsewhere. Backward compatibility and network effects are immense.
It is great for education and siloed businesses though.
Until then MSFT owns the space and can charge significant annual license fees. I dont see that changing in the next decade.
- chris_wot 9y agoI'm afraid this is the reality. LibreOffice is working towards this, and I really hope Google is too... but I'm not convinced :(