MS Office is online now! Will it change Google Docs for better?

Disclaimer: I am a Linux programmer, user and evangelist. I use open office and MS Office for work related documentation. When I bought a PC for my home use, I was very reluctant to buy ms office for the personal use as it was too pricey. Office is more expensive than MS Win7 by almost 1.6x to 2x. So, I chose not to buy the MS Office.

The Google docs service is around for quite some time now. It is a useful tool for non-m$ users like me. I could open email attachments online convert one doc format to other. So, I do not need to spend money just to open my mail attachments.

But the usefulness stops there. I don't think anyone can do some serious 'office work' on Google docs. For example, how do you do simple function like 'save as'? You will have to do 'make a copy' of a doc. Then delete the prev copy. I feel it is just good enough for very basic document/spreadsheet editing.

Recently Google added realtime doc sharing which could probably compete with plethora of web meeting tools like teamviewer, cisco webex etc. This is probably one 'new' feature that got added in so long time.

Today, this news item drew my attention. If ms office is offered online, that will give good competition to g.docs. as a result it is reasonable to expect Google would spend more money on the project and get some useable software. So, welcome Microsoft...