Word, Excel, Powerpoint - free on the web

[zapionics<alt>]

Microsoft is rising to the challenge of Google Docs, offering free Office applications on the web as it releases Office 2010...
Office 2010 brings incremental changes to Word, Excel, Publisher, Access, OneNote, PowerPoint and Outlook.
All programs include a “Save to SkyDrive” button to upload to the cloud more easily. SkyDrive is the company's name for the storage space within Office Live.
Gartner analysts said proprietary office suites would dominate the enterprise market until 2011 because they offer significant functionality and performance advantages over web-based versions.

Story over here

Hmmm, a bit of a rant:
I have concerns about privacy, security and performance. While their web services are formatting the document and applying styles and edits to it, how do they provide an assurance that the information will not be saved onto their servers at some point during the process? Or is that the intention?

And why do we need a special "Skydrive" button? Couldnt it just be another drive that we can map to? I'd also like to be able to specify the connection string somehow so that I can use my own online storage destination if I wanted to (eg: my local ISP).

I dont like the idea of my documents flying up and down the web as I edit them!
What about bandwidth? If everyone starts using this then what happens to our browsing experience?

I just want to remind everyone that there are heaps of people out there who have the technical savvy to hack packets of encrypted data and lift information from them! Governments and their authorised 3rd party agencies and vendors are doing that all the time routinely and even running keyword searches as part of their intelligience surveillance procedures.
There are still many unscrupulous individuals in positions of responsibility in the process who may choose to make use of private data (and not just Identity Theft, although thats a biggie).

This could also be a way of controlling communication and it seems the threat of abuse by a non-democratic (or just paranoid) state is high.

I personally dont want my documents:

• Exposed to the web,
• Stored on corporate servers for years,
• Indexed by keyword for various government and special interest purposes

Now I know they will say that I dont have to use it... and I wont be, but now I will have to actively manage the connection and web services and make sure there are no accidental leaks or intrusions.

It will be interesting to see how MS solves these issues.
</rant end>

[CrowdAds]

[ctal]

Hi Zap,

Those are certainly major and valid concerns that you raise about these particular applications, and about cloud computing generally. And I would add "reliability" to "privacy, security, and performance."

For instance, imagine if a company or other large facility were to lose its internet connectivity for some amount of time. That happened to my town's school system when a construction crew accidentally severed their underground cables. The result might be hundred or thousands of workers having no means of running necessary apps until repairs are completed.

Nevertheless, Microsoft, Google, and others are making incredibly large capital investments creating the facilities that are necessary to support widespread adoption of cloud computing. It'll be a while before we can really tell if those will be worthwhile investments or large scale boondoggles.

Best regards,
-- Al

[PeterT]

Zap,
All valid concerns.
Al,
Valid additional concern. My vote is for boondoggle. I never liked the whole idea anyway...