Monday, July 13, 2009
Microsoft Announces Google Apps Killer Technical Preview
It was more than a decade ago that Microsoft’s Outlook email client first became accessible over the Web. Now the rest of the company’s flagship Office suite is following suit. At the opening of its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this morning, Microsoft announced a “technical preview” of Office 2010 and revealed that some of its key applications–Word, Excel and PowerPoint–will be available over the Web in 2010. For free.
2009 is proving to be a year of dubious distinction for Microsoft in patent litigation. On Wednesday the company was ordered to pay $200 million to Toronto-based i4i for willfully infringing its patents. 
With Apple’s much lauded iPhone having captured about 19.2% of the smart-phone market, expectations were high in advance of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s keynote at the company’s World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. And Jobs did not disappoint, unveiling the iPhone 3G, which will go on sale July 11 for $199.
Amazing how a record $1.35 billion in antitrust fines can change your perspective on software interoperability, eh? Under pressure from European regulators, national standards organizations and anyone else interested in open standards, Microsoft has committed to using open document standards in the future.
