Originally Posted by Jhin Well, personally I think this is Microsoft's (somewhat) late response to the Sun Microsystems & Google partnership. Sun Microsystems has already developed a free office style product called OpenOffice (OpenOffice Website for those who want to take a look). It has been around for a while and has just released version 2.0. Now with them partnering up with Google to improve the product who knows what will happen. It's good to see Microsoft getting a little more competition and following the trends that are coming up. Despite Mr. Gate's speech to the contrary, I still think Microsoft is going to be a company that is about the money over the service they provide. They have been so big for so long they've gotten the attitude "it's my way or the highway". We'll see how it goes...

Office Live is not a Free Office Product :P It is web products that compliment the Office Application. Just like Windows Live is not a Free Windows Product, it is web products that compliment the Windows Operating System. Open Office is not a Web Product :P There are actually no connections between Open Office and Office Live; they do not do anything the other does. And if you're trying to compare Open Office to Office, there is no comparison Presuming we're talking about Office 2000 or above, you might get away with a comparison to Office 97 Sun is dead in Software and we all know it. Open Office isn't even Sun anymore, its Open Source. Plus; Google doesn't have anything on Windows Live or Office Live. It's Personalised Homepage Tool is not only subpar, but has no links to it from Google's Home! It's Talk is worthless, and the sort of services Office Live deals with Google doesn't even work in. The only thing that the Microsoft Live push has in common with Google is that it is based around getting more people using Microsoft Services on the Internet.

Originally Posted by jared MS is trying to play catch up with Yahoo and Google. I think google has been pushing for web 2.0 for some time now. We we see hwo this works. For the advanced users like you and I, I think it will work great. But I believe it might end up being a hassle for the average user.

Microsoft doesn't need to play catchup with Google. And Yahoo aren't even in the picture. Web 2.0 doesn't exist. It is a specialised Internet for Professors that none of us will ever use. Web 2.0 is a euphemism for a type of site that takes the Internet a little further and bring it into a new level of interactivity. Perhaps it is the use of AJAX, perhaps it is DHTML, all in all it is developers trying to make the Internet Richer and more easy. As for these rich web applications, Google is in catch up with Microsoft over them. Google's list of them go: Google Maps, which is poor but is still in that category, and their Personalised Homepage which you can't get to from their site and looks physically sickening. MSN's list goes: MyMSN, the first site ever to use those dockable boxes, Start.com, a fantastic aggregator service that doesn't have a refresh in sight, Live.com, a build on from Start.com, and perhaps the most fantastic demonstration, VirtualEarth, which Google has no version of on the web. The only thing it doesn't have that Google's Earth program has is a tilt, which is not useful, and that is a full Desktop Application!