The World Needs More Ninjas

The speculation du jour…Google (or Yahoo!) is building an office suite to be used via the Internet.

Last month CBROnline reported the rumour that Google might come out with a web-based office suite of its own. Since then there has been no further news to substantiate the rumour and the company has stayed mum, but nevertheless speculation has been growing that Google may well be looking at the prospect of a web-based office suite.

According to Massa, it is only a matter of time before a big name comes up with a web-based office suite to compete with Microsoft Office: “If you think about it, it would mean having access to your office documents from any browser,” he told CBR, outlining his view that a provider could enable the creation and storage of office documents on their web servers. “I think someone will do this within a year,” he said. “The business model is still not completely clear, but someone will do it.”

I’m sure that someone is building such an Office suite commercially. The question is who can build a useful one that has a method of generating revenue. One of my co-workers interned at Microsoft this summer and he told me that this in Microsoft’s biggest fear that Google will release a web-based Office suite. I think with Windows Vista, Redmond is seeing how difficult it is becoming to continue to reap large profits in the operating systems domain given that it takes much longer than it used to to create an OS with enough value added that people will pay to upgrade.

That leaves Office, which is Microsoft’s real cash cow. If the profits that they get from a new version of Office every three years are significantly reduced by a competitor, they’ll be in a world of hurt. (Well, as much hurt as is possible for a company with over $50 billion in cash)

Update: It’s happening.

[Oct 4, 2005] Google & Sun are to announce an Office Suite based on OpenOffice, and accessible via web browser, according to Jonathan Schwartz –President and COO of Sun Microsystems

The announcement is expected at 1:30 ET today.

Hmmm…that was a lot quicker than I expected. Speculation yesterday, reality this morning!