Well, barring the terribly obvious implications of a headline like that, apparently competitors to Microsoft’s Office Suite are chipping away at their market share. Sure, we probably have a little (if anything at all) to do with this, as the PaulTech Network has touted ThinkFree and OpenOffice before. What really puts the hammer to Office is that each of the competitors are nimble, free, and, in some cases, just as functional as the expensive suite normally chosen above the rest. With the increasing acceptance of professional open-source programs, it’s no longer taboo to fire up your PowerPoint presentation with Sun’s OpenOffice set.
That’s not to say Office doesn’t still have it’s place. However, more people who want an office suite but don’t need the frills of, say, Small Business 2007, are finding free and easy-to-use alternatives. As a college student, I love Office: there’s so much functionality that is essential to proper college work, it’s hard to imagine being without it. Of course, if all you needed was a word processor, it’s hardly fair to force you to purchase more than you need.
What’s a PaulTech article without the mention of Google? Google has even gotten in on this market with Google Docs, a completely web-based document suite. It’s nowhere near as fleshed out as OpenOffice or ThinkFree, but it does have a few features of both, such as the ability to store documents on Google servers to be accessed anywhere. It’s, unfortunately, not the most flexible solution, though. Still, while the competition to Microsoft’s behemoth may be small in size, they still commands attention; attention that Microsoft once had squarely in it’s pocket, and that is something in and of itself.
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