$google . $sun != "WebOffice"

Apparently the rumors of a Google and Sun powered Web office were false. According to The Register [link omitted due to Christian-Geek unfriendly photo of John Battelle flipping of the camera], the speculations of a Web Office were untrue, silly, and not that great of an idea anyhow.

What Google will be doing is adding OpenOffice.org centered features to their increasingly popular Google Toolbar (which I still have yet to download since switching to Firefox). This is a nice step in a good direction, but it is not as huge a step or as good a direction as the previous rumors seemed to be.

Why Web Based Office Software Would be Good:

An entire web-based Office Suite would be sort of silly and probably a bit slow. A few web-based Office Applications, on the otherhand, would be amazing! Currently, the fear of retraining Microsoft Office users, and the burden of installing new software are the top two reasons not to switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org or StarOffice.

The concept of difficult training sessions and countless hours of converting and reformatting existing documents are reasons to fear a new office suite. The only problem is they are all bogus fears. Because I now see "openoffice.org Writer" instead of "Microsoft Word" in my title bar, I do not suddenly loose all knowledge of writing letters, creating tables, and loading templates.

The first fear: difficult training sessions: Clicking the thick "B" still makes text bold, and the slanted "i" still means italic. In fact, the few items that have changed dramatically feel easier, and more intuitive in openoffice.org. For example, inserting a graph of data from a table is as simple as creating a table (in the document you are working in), highlight the table, then choose Insert>Object>Chart. This does not open a spreadsheet application, force me to rewrite my data, generate the graph, then allow me to insert a "window" into the spreadsheet application. This is much simpler, cleaner, and intuitive.

The second fear: countless hours of converting/reformatting: This, is a good example of a "half-truth". Yes, it will be a little difficult to convert all of your documents. You shouldn't need to reformat existing documents, as openoffice.org can open .doc files. The only reason you may have trouble with certain design aspects, is because Microsoft Office does not, and does not intend to, use Standard File Formats such as OpenDocument.

If you create all of your new documents using OpenDocument, and you decide you need to make a major change to every single document you have ever created, then you can simply write a small script that will go through, open, change, and save all of your documents without even opening an office application. This is the feature of using a non-proprietary format. Had Microsoft Office used a different standard file format that is freely available to the public (such as XML or a derrivative), then converting documents would be a simple matter of converting the existing format's schema to the OpenDocument schema. Too bad Word .doc files use a closed, proprietary format, instead of one that would allow you to change things easily.

Back on Topic: Why Web-Based Office Software is good: By offering a flexible, easy to use, free software application online that could easily replace Microsoft Word, all of the popular fears, myths, doubts, and excuses would be null-and-void. Imagine this scenario:

CEO: "I don't understand computers, but I heard this web-based openoffice.org thing could replace our $400 office suite for everyone who doesn't use the advance features. Why don't we switch?"

IT: "I am MCSE certified and make lots of money because of it. VBA is an amazing language that lets you write applications into memos. Microsoft Office is already on everyone's computers and we all know how to use it. Switching would be difficult, time consuming, and in the end cost more than purchasing the next version of Office."

CEO: "I don't know what VBA is, but someone at woventhorns.com told me openoffice.org can use their own version of BASIC, Beanshell, Javascript, Java, and something called Python. I've also heard it functions just like Word, so training won't be an issue. Plus, if it is already online, the Christian Geek, OneSeventeen, told me we could just add the URL to the web-based Writer to our router's Whitelist."

IT: "But everyone already uses Word at home too."

CEO: "If openoffice.org is free, why not just get people to install it at home as well? (or use the web based one if they have the internet) Then people who don't have Microsoft Office can open our office documents without us having to convert them to some other weird format like RTF or PDF. (whatever those are, since I don't know much about computers)"

IT: "Everyone has PDF though, and it is increasingly popular."

CEO: "Oh yeah, woventhorns.com guy also said openoffice.org can save to PDF without extra plugins."

IT: "But Microsoft gave me this free Office T-shirt."

CEO: "I have a shirt with a pinguin on it if you want."

IT: "But I don't like pinguins"

CEO: "You're fired."

As you can plainly see, IT departments will be scared, but once given the opportunity to use a product that does not require installing software, training individuals, converting documents, or reading more books, they will be much more likely to switch over and trade in their Microsoft shirt for a GNU shirt.