(Originally posted at Cloud Avenue)

This year’s Microsoft Profesional Developers Conference is full of announcements and surprises. The next big announcement besides Windows Azure (and Windows 7?) is the new “Office Web Applications” live service. The Office team will be delivering the five most popular Office applications as light weight browser based versions that include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Here are some of the demo screenshots available:

The applications will be offered in both a simple HTML/AJAX version and a rich-client Silverlight version.
Office Web Applications are not planned to replace Microsoft’s traditional desktop offering but rather complete it, together with Mobile Office for mobile devices, allowing users to seamlessly work on their documents across all environments.

Providing such a reach collaboration environment isn’t a simple task as you can see in the following interview of Antoine Leblond, Senior VP of Office Productivity Apps and Chris Bryant, General Program Manager:

Although its not meant to replace its Desktop Office offering, one of Microsoft’s biggest cash cows, one has got to wonder about the risk these new services to cannibalize their big desktop brother’s profits. Windows and Office, which are Microsoft’s core business, are likely to stay its core moneymakers for at least the next 2-3 years, maybe even longer.
This move clearly shows that Microsoft is starting to think beyond that and along with its other platform announcements (Azure, Live Mesh…) we can clearly see a trend away from desktop software to rich clients installed from the web….

Office Web Applications will be released to a limited set of partners and customers at the end of this year. The release date will closely align with Office 14 and Windows 7 which will be sometime in late 2009 or early 2010.
Microsoft plans to make Office Web Applications available as a service through its Live platform supporting both an ad-funded and a paid-subscription models.
Business users that require an on-premise will be able to do so through Sharepoint via its traditional volume licensing program.

Tags: Cloud Avenue, Desktop Office, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Mobile Office, Office, Office 14, Office Live, Office Productivity Apps, Office Suites, Office Web Applications, PDC 2008, Web Applications, Windows, Windows 7

It seems like Google is making comic books these days. Its also announcing a new browser - Chrome - which we haven’t and know nothing about except the fact that it’s (obviously, an antitrust waiting to happen?) bundled with Google Gears. This of course, does not prevent Michael Arrington from TechCrunch of making outrageous claims calling it a “Windows Killer”:

When combined with Gears, which allows for offline access, Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows.

I’ve heard about Google’s Window-Killing abilities before….  where was that?  ah! right! scrolling all the way back to August 2005 where a new Google App is just about to revolutionize the way we communicate, the world, and the very fabric of the universe:

keith.teare: “It’s almost as if Google is implementing the features Microsoft has announced for Longhorn - Sidebar; voice calls inside IM, RSS integration - but doing it ahead of Microsoft, by about 12 months.

A Google layer between Users and the OS.

Rendering the OS a commodity

GTalk… remember GTalk? Google killed Vista with GTalk and will now kill Microsoft entirety thanks to coupling Google Gears to a JavaScript engine (not just any engine… an optimized one!)

And on a more serious note - Google’s business is all about AdSense.
It’s entire products line revolves around AdSense and anything that doesn’t help its business grow - dies. Even Android, under all the open-source and Apple hating PR, it about serving ads to mobiles.
Having said that, I wonder where Chrome fits in…

Tags: Android, Chrome, GOOG, Google, Michael Arrington, Microsoft, operating system, Vista, Windows