“We don’t call it an office suite. It’s not an office suite.”

— In 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmidt denies the company is planning an assault on Microsoft Office.

This is amusing–if only because Google insisted for so long that it doesn’t have designs on Microsoft’s core PC software business. Discussing Google Docs and the company’s other productivity offerings with ZDNet Asia, Dave Girouard, president of Google’s enterprise division, volunteered that most businesses will have the opportunity to “get rid of [Microsoft] Office if they chose to” in a year.

“We wouldn’t ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet,” Girouard said. But once it is and Google’s finishes with the 30+ features and performance updates it has planned for the office suite in the next year, the company will no doubt ask just that.

And when Google (GOOG) does, what will happen to Microsoft (MSFT)? Not to worry, Redmond, there will still be a place for your Office business in Google’s new software-as-a-service empire. Said Girouard: “I don’t think Office will entirely disappear.”

[Image credit: Flickr/FF2D]

With those words, spoken at a big company event in New York City (see video below), the Microsoft CEO launched the newest version of Windows, the one he hopes will regain the customer goodwill lost with its predecessor, Vista. There’s no question that the stakes are particularly high this time around. Vista was widely maligned as mediocre, and Microsoft (MSFT) needs something to reverse three quarters of declining Windows sales.

By most accounts, Windows 7 fits that bill. Reviews of the new operating system have been largely positive, calling it faster, more secure and easier to use that its predecessors. Our own Walt Mossberg describes it as “the best version of Windows Microsoft has produced…a boost to productivity and a pleasure to use.” Quite an endorsement, but one that was hard won. According to Microsoft, more than eight million people participated in the Windows 7 beta program–more than for any Microsoft beta program ever.

In any event, if any OS has a shot at succeeding Windows XP as the world’s most ubiquitous operating system, it’s Windows 7. “I think Windows 7 will be the biggest, one of the biggest, products to hit the tech industry this year,” Ballmer told CNBC. “Just because Windows is used on about one billion computers around the planet. There’ll be another 300 million machines that ship this year, and the diversity of PCs that ship with Windows 7, the simplicity that Windows 7 brings–I think it’s a pretty banner year.”

While you might think of the Flip as a consumer device it is just as useful in our business line. The number of applications enabled by this network web 2.0 device in the business world is exploding.

Again using myself as an example I carry the same two devices in my business life and my personal life. A PDA and my Flip. Another key take away is to understand in my opinion the argument about consumer devices and business devices as well as the two architectures completely blurring is over. The real question is how do the CIO’s in the enterprise business facilitate this change and that is from a number [of] recent meetings with some of the top CIO’s in the world. They get it. They understand the change and it is how they facilitate it rather than slow it down.

An interesting point. That said, I imagine it will take a while for enterprise to overcome its security concerns over such uses. And for their employees to feel comfortable conducting personal business on company-issued handsets governed by those annoying corporate communications policies….

Facebook really is That company. Which company? That one. That company that shows up once in a very long while–the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago. That company where large numbers of stunningly-brilliant people congregate and feed off each other’s genius. That company that’s doing with 60 engineers what teams of 600 can’t pull off. That company that’s on the cusp of Changing The World, that’s still small enough where each employee has a huge impact on the organization, where you think about working now and again, and where you know you’ll kick yourself in three years if you don’t jump on the bandwagon now, even after someone had told you that it was rolling toward the promised land. That company where everyone seems to be having the time of their life. … I’m serious. I have drunk from the Kool-Aid, and it is delicious.”

– Facebook manager Justin Rosenstein, June 15, 2007

Facebook manager Justin Rosenstein once described the social network as “the Google (GOOG) of yesterday, the Microsoft (MSFT) of long ago.” Today, Rosenstein perhaps views it as the Facebook of So Totally Last Week because he’s leaving the company, along with departing Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Together the two hope to develop some sort of new extensible enterprise productivity suite, something that will be “to your work life what Facebook.com is to your social life,” according to a post on Rosenstein’s Facebook page.

“We see this new venture as very complementary to Facebook,” Rosenstein explained. “We hope our products will become to your work life what Facebook.com is to your social life. Our software will use Facebook Connect as the default option for identity and authentication. Our user interface will adopt many of Facebook’s conventions, creating a seamless and familiar experience for current Facebook users. And if our new development tools turn out to be useful, we hope the Facebook engineering team will come to adopt them.”

The departures are a blow to Facebook, which has been suffering something of a brain drain recently, and more specifically, to CEO Mark Zuckerberg who founded the company with Moskovitz while the two were undergraduates at Harvard.

Why, exactly, this is an issue in this age of “work-life balance” and ROWE (results-only work environment) isn’t exactly clear. As retail giant Best Buy (BBY) has proven, employee “presence” doesn’t always equate with “employee productivity.” Why shouldn’t workers be free to spend some personal time online at work if they’re meeting their goals?

“Why should employers allow their workers to waste two hours a day on Facebook when they are being paid to do a job?” wondered Mike Huss, employment-law director at Peninsula, echoing an anti-Internet canard that first surfaced when AOL debuted as a workplace tool in the 1990s. “The figures that we have calculated are minimums, and it’s a problem that I foresee will escalate. Some companies are happy to let their workers use the Internet for personal use, assuming that goals and targets are achieved. However, loss of productivity through social networks such as Facebook is proving to be a major headache, and my advice would be for companies to block access.”

How’s the saying go? All social network and no play makes Jack an unemployed boy?