Gary Edwards's Library tagged michael-hickins →  View Popular

Another good article form Michael Hickins, this time linking the success of Google Wave to the success of Microsoft OOXML. Rob Weir jumps in to defend , well, i'm not sure. I did however respond.

Excerpt: Developers hoping to hitch a ride on Google’s Wave have discovered that Microsoft may have unwittingly helped them resolve the single greatest problem they needed to overcome in order to challenge the dominance of Office.

When Microsoft set out to create Office 2007 using a brand new code base — Office Open XML (OOXML) — it needed to accomplish two goals: make it compatible with all previous versions of Office, and have it accepted as a standard file format for productivity tools so that governments could continue using it while complying with rules forcing them to use standards-based software. .....

Depending on your perspective, either Microsoft has sowed the seeds of its own undoing, or international standards bodies succeeded in forcing Microsoft to open itself up. Either way, Microsoft has given away the key to compatibility with Office documents, allowing all comers to overcome the one barrier that has heretofore prevented customers from dumping Microsoft’s Office suite.

industry.bnet.com/...ft-ratted-itself-out-of-office - Preview

MSOffice-productivity michael-hickins google-wave ooxml