Microsoft wants to take Office 2010 to the web offering some lightweight Office applications running inside the browser.
Shortly after Google announced entering the OS space with Google Chrome OS, Microsoft issued a press release announcing a suite of 4 web applications running in the cloud and in the browser: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The applications will run without using Silverlight, only using JavaScript and AJAX. The applications are currently developed and tested to run on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari on PCs but also on mobile devices like iPhone.
Microsoft announced Office 2010 is in Technical Preview and will send invitations to evaluate it to Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference attendees. The suite will be on the market during the first half of 2010. Office Web is not included in the current preview program, but will be made available for preview later this year.
To fight the competition like Google Docs and Zoho, Office Web will be free and the infrastructure will be ready to let 500 million people use it through Windows Live. It is still unknown if it will incorporate ads or not.
Office Web does not intend to be a replacement for Office Desktop and will be lacking some important features:
Capossela [senior VP for Microsoft's Business unit] said he doesn't believe Office Web will cannibalize the desktop version of Office, sales of which to consumers were down 30 percent in Microsoft's most recent quarter. "We haven't taken the approach where the Web apps are a duplication of the client apps," said Capossela. "We try to make them incredibly good for the device you are using," he added.
One of the features missing is collaborative editing added to Office 2007 though updates and adds-on and being improved in the up coming Office 2010. It is not clear if collaborative features will be added to all Office Web apps later. Excel Web has them according to Chris Bryant, PM of Office 2010, and they were not added to Word and PowerPoint because of less interest from the customers.