Instead, they are attracted to Google’s online apps, which are not as feature-rich – but perhaps simpler is better. Microsoft has been extending the life of the Office franchise by leveraging that nostalgic loyalty with mobile and online services like OneDrive and the online versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.īut there is a long-term threat: younger businesses did not grow up with Word and Excel and feel no loyalty. The Office file formats are an important reason that we still use Windows computers in our offices. For decades, businesses have used Microsoft Office programs exclusively for documents, spreadsheets and presentations. There has been a divide between businesses, almost a generation gap. But you’ll have been able to work on it with all the things that Google Drive brings to the table – speed, automatic saving of updates and changes, and easy collaboration.

When you’re done, it will still be a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file. In other words, you’ll be able to upload a Word document (.DOCX), an Excel spreadsheet (.XLSX), or a PowerPoint presentation (.PPTX) to Google Drive and work on it directly in Google Docs. Google is adding native support to Google Docs for editing, commenting, and collaborating on files in Microsoft Office file formats. The change it has announced sounds innocuous but might have big consequences in the long run. Google is trying to make the grass look greener in its walled garden, hoping to lure businesses that might otherwise stay loyal to Microsoft.

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