Microsoft Office 2010 Coming Soon to a Browser Near You

Microsoft has released details of the next iteration of its productivity suite Office. This next version, dubbed Office 2010, will include browser-based versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote.

The web version of Office 2010 will be a direct competitor to Google Docs and like Google Docs will be free to use. Currently Google Docs offers word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications online and the online versions can be saved to your local hard drive as well as shared with Google Docs users.

Microsoft’s offering appears to be similar but with the added bonus that the desktop version of the Office Applications will be able to talk directly to the online servers and so allow documents to be saved on the web and create a “work anywhere” infrastructure.

Although these web versions of the Office Web applications are called “lightweight” they provide access to documents from virtually anywhere and preserve the look and feel of a document. What this means practically is that the web based version of office will be recognizable as an Office application and your documents won’t get all mangled up when you edit them on the web.

This new version of Office is specifically for Microsoft Windows and doesn’t include an update to the Apple Mac version. Historically the Mac version of Office has always been developed by a separate group inside Microsoft and they release a new versions every two to three years, so the next version of Office for the Mac will probably be Office 2011.

Microsoft will launch this next version of Office in the first half of 2010. They have also created a web site about it: http://www.microsoft.com/Office2010.