back to article Microsoft's anti–Google Docs weapon locked and loaded

The rebranded edition of Microsoft's answer to Google Docs is officially launching on June 28, a top company executive has revealed. Jon Roskill, corporate vice president for the worldwide partner group, has Tweeted that the beta label comes off the productivity and collaboration cloud on June 28, when it will become generally …

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  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    FAIL

    Uses Exchange?

    Then it is a fail then.

    Come on microsoft show some invention, show some initiative instead of copying everyone else.

  2. SteveBalmer
    FAIL

    Errm

    Does it work as well on Android as Google Docs does?

    If not forget it.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Words, letters

    If its anything like as nasty as Office 2007, MS can shove it.

    Sideways

  4. multipharious

    Google wants your data

    Microsoft wants the user count. If you run a company and your options are to go with a known abuser of privacy whose business model is based on finding ad relevance, or an established player with a licensing driven model that demonstrates transparency and (oh Lord am I going to say this?) trust, who would you go with? I used to be such a Google fan (start page + had one of their first mousepads on my desk in the early 2000s) but I don't trust them at all anymore.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Simple Solution, dont. use. exchange.

    On the issue of server reliability:

    With a 20 year pedigree of senseless pain, agony and cruelty, the Exchange team has exemplified the worst part of Microsoft's server and Office efforts for decades. Remember manually copying each mailbox when you migrated to a new server? Remember when your mailstores got corrupted? Ever had to provide forensics data from a '98 era mailbox? Ever had to fix a 3gb+ .pst from outlook? Remember all of those late 90's auto exploting email viruses?

    How about the mid oughts? Ever seen what happens when you used the Excange webmail connector on a public IP? Yup, each different computer a person logged into was eating your non-refundable CALS. Saw an online university burn 20k in USD that way, while microsoft consulting was promising that everything would work just fine. Lets face it, if your product makes people wax nostalgic for PINE, you know you are in deep deep trouble.

    The glacial pace of improvements in email are what drove the world away from local email clients and on-site mail servers and into web mail. Gmails user interface is substandard compared to a real email client from the late 90s, but is still certainly better for most people than Outlook, even in it's latest incarnation. Pity all of the smaller time mail clients pretty much stopped evolving 10 years ago. Most people I talk to today aren't even aware that there is email that is NOT webmail.

    Winning back the masses is a laudable goal, but they should be moving their email service into their successful web servies in the cloud migration, not chaining their cloud efforts to an Exchange/Sharepoint anchor.

  6. Spanners Silver badge
    Facepalm

    I have yet to find

    any Webmail based system that does not have some pretty major security weaknesses in addition to the ones requiring a client.

    The simplest easiest to duplicate is the fact that they can be used from anywhere by anyone.

    "But that is what they are all about!" some might think.

    Get your super secure SSL protected service, pick up your teenagers laptop and take it to your favourite eatery and check your mail while having a drink and a cake. How safe do you think you are? The laptop could have spyware, trojans & viruses on it. Open public Wifi is not always too secure either.

    Nip into a cybercafe and check on one of their systems. Safe???

    Go to your local public library and try there. Same again.

    OK then. You are using it from a fixed PC, That's safe isn't it? Safer. But why on earth would you want it hosted on a company that wants to know as much about you as possible, better to try and push advertising for stuff that you were not aware you need or on a company that has been found to have some seriously unsavoury ethical and business practices in the past and regards you as little more than someone to push its appalling licencing model upon?

    Webmail is convenient. I use an android phone and find Gmail very useful on it or on a PC. Nothing confidential goes on there and I have been using the internet for long enough that I do not actually notice adverts most of the time. (Pop ups/unders/etc I see long enough before closing to have the names in mind to not do busines with them in future.)

  7. Dest
    FAIL

    This Is An Instant Fail

    Microsoft or the current management of Microsoft count on the old world idea of people having short memories.

    I know that everyone seems excited about the "Cloud" now or at lease it is being promoted that way but I was watching France 24 the other day as I always do because it is my favorite News Channel.

    And a IT contributor on there was talking about the so called "Cloud".

    He was saying that as soon as businesses and Governments discover how inherently insecure Cloud computing is they will abandon it immediately.

    He said that if you have anything that is secret or of any value the Cloud is not the place for it.

    Yes, Google and Microsoft both have their hands in it and both companies Spy on users.

    Everyone does too, they have to even if they don't want to because the law is written that way.

    Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and every other Spy agency has access to it.

    MI5, MI6, the Mossad and everyone else. it's the law. Everyone has to comply even if they don't want to. They have to comply or they would be banned by any paranoid country that feels it's necessary to have complete control over every aspect of everyone's life.

    You can bet that if some have master keys to it which they do then it can and will be compromised by others as well.

    The American Government is incredibly paranoid and so is the British, China, Russia, Iran, Japan, North Korea, Cuba, Israel, just to name a few.

    If you want any kind of privacy in your daily computing then stay away from the Cloud, That is what the IT expert on France 24 was talking about.

    Personally I could care less about Google Docs or MS Exchange because I have no intention of using anything like that for my own personal use.

    I will never buy into anything that involves the Cloud not because I am a bad person or anything like that, it's because I don't need it or want it.

  8. Rob Moss.
    FAIL

    Launch date named, reliability claimed

    All pigs fed and ready to fly

  9. Miek
    Thumb Down

    Another irrelevant service?

    Yawn, that is all

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Not a hope...

    ... Government data on servers other than those owned by Government? Madness. Wouldn't be allowed in the UK under GCSX. Government data needs to stay on government servers. Can you imagine what would happen if the Internet connection went down? Any service which can't pick itself up and continue to serve the public if disaster strikes, would be taken out and rightfully shot.

    It raises a question about the Birmingham to India outsourcing; GCSX might render that a no-go for a start and leave a lot of egg on Birmingham's face.

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