We’ve always loved Microsoft Office. Every version in the last decade has been a great productivity boost for us. Some people don’t like Office, but usually for really dumb reasons.

So when we hear people tell us how great online versions of Office are (eg Google Apps) we just laugh. Are you seriously saying that Google Apps gives you all the functionality you need to meet your professional requirements? We think not.

The beauty, speed and usefulness of Office is entirely due to it being a desktop based, thick client. Moving it online, or attempting to move it online, is never gonna work out better. And in 95% of situations you have to ask whether having it online is any easier anyway. Sure, there’s a reduced deployment process, but that’s about all.

Anyway, sounds like Steve Ballmer thinks the same. When asked about a comparison of Google Apps to Microsoft Office, he almost fell off his chair (we assume he was sitting on a chair at the time of the question – otherwise he may attempted to throw it <g>). He sums it up Google Apps beautifully:

“Nobody uses those things, and the usage data hasn’t grown in seven months. If you look at the ComScore, it’s just like this: It’s just a flat line. You can’t even put a footnote in a document.”

Source: eWeek news

We couldn’t agree more.