Gates Admits To Online Office, But Denies Significance

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 08 November 2006

In an interview with the Financial Times, Bill Gates, software architect for Microsoft Corp has admitted the company plans to launch online versions of its Office productivity tools. On the eve of the company's release of tis latest MS Office suite release, Gates stops short of admitting online versions of the software will have any impact on the market for the desktop productivity suite that accounts for so much of the software vendor's revenues. Gates apparently took the bait and "hinted" that Microsoft will launch simplified online versions of its desktop software as he "hit back" at suggestions that services from Google might start to eat away at one of its core revenue engines. Although Google has denied any designs on the market that Microsoft has so successfully commanded in the past decade or two, it is widely believed that Google will eventually offer a full desktop productivity suite online. It already offers many of the core elements either bundled or separately with mail, calendar, image manipulation as well as the recently combined word processing and spreadsheeting offering Google Docs. Gates boasted to the Financial Times that Microsoft will match Google's offering but he "argued strongly" that this would only ever represent "a small part of the market". Is Gates seriously still stuck in the 80's and 90's that made him rich and famous? Perhaps. Gates said to the Financial Times journalist: "There's a difference between actually running an application on a server versus letting a document be found on a server," he said. "We're going to make a push to let you keep documents on a server." Huh? He was also reported saying something along the lines of: since most office workers use full-functioning PCs, It makes sense to take advantage of that local computing power with local applications, even if the documents are held centrally. Microsoft has recently released its Beta 2 take an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), previously codenamed Atlas, ASP.Net AJAX Extensions and Library for the .Net platform seems to take the same approach to AJAX as it has to other cross platform initiatives like Java. Gates was also reported as saying something along the lines of; "We're going to cover 100 per cent of the productivity needs - our track record is to keep innovating." Gates basically argued that the current crop of online desktop tools was no better than the company offered in its MS Works suite and that the market isn't likely to accept that level of functionality. While Microsoft keeps innovating, Gates has his focus on other things.  Along with billionaire Saudi investor, Prince Alwaleed, Gates was part of a  US$3.7bn bid for Four Seasons Hotels earlier this week. Related news items Chilli iBurst Increases Download Limits -16/09/2007 Nokia Adds PlayReady -06/08/2007 iPhone Gets Enterprise Credibility -16/07/2007 Microsoft Flexes Its Muscle -06/05/2007 Microsoft Reports Record Profit -29/04/2007 Newer news items Just For The Record: No Ferrari Laptops Here -02/01/2007 Palm Licenses Palm OS -12/12/2006 Enterprise Mobility To Grow At 9.5%: IDC -05/12/2006 Mobile Email To Grow At 21% A Year -05/12/2006 Battery Recalls Could Change Market Share: IDC -30/11/2006 Older news items NTP To Palm: Right. You! Outside. -06/11/2006 Dell Laptops Part Of NT Teachers Arsenal -01/11/2006 Nokia Finds New Direction -30/10/2006 Foxconn Drops Suit Entirely: Reuters -04/09/2006 Broadcom To Qualcomm: It Ain't Over Yet -03/09/2006 Tag This Now: