aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, March 12, 2007

New Google Apps competitor: Microsoft

Doug loves Google Apps. Rumors continue that Microsoft competition is coming in the space:

Microsoft developer Tod Hilton wrote a blog post that says it’s his last day with Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services. He’s now moved to the Excel Services team, he says.

Hilton originally posted information on where the product is headed, then quickly removed it. The original text said”

The product has tons of potential and will probably be competing with the likes of Google Spreadsheets, DabbleDB, Zoho and JotSpot Tracker. It’s a really exciting time to be working on this product!

He then removed those sentences and said:

update: I removed some of my personal opinions from this post. I do not want to confuse anyone who might take them as prophecy.

While this doesn’t give away a whole lot, it’s clear that the team is looking to compete directly with Google Apps and Zoho, something they don’t do now. That implies that they are building an online reader/light editor at least for Excel.

Via John Battelle who also points to Microsoft’s roll out of two non browser-based search integrations.