Last week, Google revealed that they are working on an operating system to be named the same as their browser, Chrome. It was suspected that the announcement by Google was to whip up some headlines ahead of a Microsoft event on Monday expected to reveal Office 2010.
Articles and blog posts were written asking if this was the ‘end of Microsoft’ but that has died down now. I believe Google’s operating system success will be like those for current netbook OSs at present, such as Moblin and Presto, it will get along, perhaps have a little more success owing to the Google brand but won’t take over the desktop space anytime soon.
Over time however, if Google can provide the touted simplicity, reliability and security from the ground up as well as running the applications and drivers that users require, it will put a dent in Windows sales. If the OS takes into heavy consideration the usability and appearance of the OS, Apple’s OS could come into the firing line also for those requiring an easy to use system but without the high cost of hardware.
However Google do, Office has been reworked for another revision by Microsoft. Office 2010 sees the ribbon bar extended to Outlook, which didn’t receive the facelift in Office 2007, perhaps to ease users into the new UI via the other applications.
There are a vast number of new features; a notable one, although basic, was the live screenshots being taken in the background by Word. As Robert Scoble rightly mentions in his video (from 1min 12), this could come in handy for bloggers. From the Insert menu in Word, the screenshots can be selected from a drop down list and inserted immediately into the current document. See the video of it in action, titled New copy and paste features in Office 2010.
Also, the biggest news of all and of more relevance to remote workers and home users, there will be a free version of Office 2010 available to use via the Internet and will not rely on Internet Explorer to use. This is not the first office suite to go online, there have been pure online offerings from Zoho and Google Docs for a few years now.
Check out the videos highlighting some of the new features in Office 2010 at the official site (via Long Zheng) check out Robert Scoble’s videos of an Office briefing from Chris Bryant, product manager at Microsoft.