With Rewrite, Google Docs Takes Microsoft Office Head On: Page 4 of 4

What's Ahead

There are a few ways the market could go over the next few years.

Microsoft, roused by Google, could deliver such a compelling, comprehensive set of online and on-premises applications in the coming months--particularly Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010--that Google won't be able to gain traction. If Microsoft matches Docs' online collaboration, it nixes a big reason to go back and forth.

However, Google still offers that price point--$50 per user a year for e-mail, with Docs thrown. Microsoft's pricing is complex by comparison, with prices for different pieces, and CIOs love keeping that Google bargaining chip in play.

Alternatively, Google could overtake Microsoft, the way Facebook shot past MySpace. Don't count on it. Office shows no sign of fading, Microsoft says it's serious about the cloud, and SharePoint is deeply entrenched in many multinational customers' collaboration strategies. "Packaging has worked for us in the past, and it helps that we already have business relationships with most of these customers," says Kurt DelBene, senior VP of Microsoft's Office group.

Or, the two suites could cohabitate. Today, CIOs can justify leaving Docs for people to use or not because it's essentially free once they pay for Gmail. Google's rewrite makes it easier to move documents from Office to Docs. And Google last month acquired DocVerse, which lets people collaborate on Office apps online. Google is trying to make itself the bridge to the cloud, trying to be the collaborative backbone information workers use, even for those using Office. "The way you win in this space, and the way the market is going, is in this redefinition of how people are working," says Matt Glotzbach, Google's enterprise product manager.

Stay tuned for Microsoft Office 2010 in May. This rivalry's for real.

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