
Chrome Office Viewer: this is how Google goes head-to-head with Microsoft - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/chrome-office-viewer-this-is-how-google-goes-head-to-head-with-microsoft/
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taeric
If this is how Google goes head-to-head with Microsoft, I have to confess it
doesn't look that good for Google. :)

On the other hand, my wife has been perfectly happy with LibreOffice. (Was not
as happy with LaTeX. :) )

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Zigurd
I would say about the same thing. At dozens of MB is size, one might think it
would work at least as well as Libre Office, which, based on recent
experience, is pretty competent at editing docx files. Google seems to be
starting far back from the current state of the art.

What I would really like is a set of Android apps for editing Google Drive
documents offline, and richer formatting for Drive documents.

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manojlds
The best way to create them is using MS Office. This will only make it easier
for people to create and share using Office formats without worrying about
whether the person has Office installed or not. So, isn't it a win for MS?

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jonknee
Chicken and egg, for many people if you can't view certain files you can't use
Chrome OS. I hope it works as well as their PDF plug-in, I always hate getting
a link to a spreadsheet or doc and have my downloads folder clutter up (not to
mention the bloat of Office).

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jimbobimbo
BTW, there's also an Office web viewer, which doesn't seem to require signing
up for SkyDrive.

[http://blogs.office.com/b/officewebapps/archive/2013/04/10/o...](http://blogs.office.com/b/officewebapps/archive/2013/04/10/office-
web-viewer-view-office-documents-in-a-browser.aspx)

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cabbeer
What makes word processors so diffucult to develop? I once heard heard that
Microsoft has 3,000 developers working on office.

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thejosh
Viewer only it seems?

Doesn't microsoft publish free versions of their Viewer? Though this does
support multiple browsers.

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tomku
This is a Chrome extension that uses NaCl, so I don't think it supports
multiple browsers or will any time soon.

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prezjordan
Is the .docx standard public? (Intentionally?)

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jrajav
Yes: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML>

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gizmo686
Did Microsoft run into any trademark issues calling the format "Office Open
XML", considering one of the competitors to the Microsoft Office suite is
called "Open Office".

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r00fus
I'm sure Microsoft chose that name on purpose to create brand confusion.

