Google Pleased With ISO OOXML Decision

yogi writes "In a blog post from this Friday past, Google welcomed the ISO decision not to fasttrack OOXML. They also (once again) voiced their public support for the ODF standard. 'Technical standards should be arrived at transparently, openly, and based on technical merit. Google is committed to helping the standards community remain true to this ideal and maintain their independence from any commercial pressure ... Google supports one open document format and calls on industry participants to collaboratively work on ODF. With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass onto future generations.'"

Of course.

[jeevesbond (1066726)]

With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass onto future generations.

Which is of course what Microsoft must stop at all costs. Also worth remembering is that were the shoe on the other foot, and Google had the business lockin and office suite monopoly Microsoft enjoy, they'd probably protect their proprietary formats at all costs too. So whilst Google's opinion may be aligned with most people here, do remember that they're a company whose sole aim is profit.

This looks like a fortuitous PR stunt to me, I don't doubt that Google like ODF now but we shouldn't forget that Microsoft have been known to be open [tuxdeluxe.org] when they lack market share too [slashdot.org].

Re:Of course.

[daeg (828071)]

They are two separate business interests, really. Google's interest is in being able to search and index content. I'm sure they'd love a standard document format that isn't proprietary like their indexing of .DOC files.

Microsoft could embrace ODF. They could integrate it with Microsoft Office, eliminate .DOC, and produce the best ODF tools in the market and maintain their dominance, even in Government. Open Office, while great for the breadth of its tools, is a complicated beast and can be overwhelming for general office staff.

Instead, Microsoft plays these games, giving OpenOffice and others valuable time to play catch up while more and more governments around the world pull back away from the monstrosity Microsoft has created.

As an example of a company with proprietary software doing well with open standards, look at Adobe and the PDF standard. You can download everything about the standard from Adobe's website. There are competing readers (for Windows and other platforms), other PDF tools galore, but people still turn to Adobe products. We still rely on Distiller. We still rely on (now) Live Cycle. When you want crisp viewing of PDFs with good options, you use Adobe Reader (Foxit and others are catching up). Even Microsoft has benefited (Export to PDF in Office 2007 - FINALLY after over a decade without it).

Re:Of course.

[king-manic (409855)]

Microsoft could embrace ODF. They could integrate it with Microsoft Office, eliminate .DOC, and produce the best ODF tools in the market and maintain their dominance, even in Government. Open Office, while great for the breadth of its tools, is a complicated beast and can be overwhelming for general office staff.

From past experience MS realize that fair competition isn't good for the ones competing. Google isn't really competing in the same way as the profit off of something independent of what office suit you use. Just as MS previously didn't care which Windows loaded PC you bought. While MS has a vested interest which office suite you use now. So having a open standard gives other companies a way in to crowd into MS's business model.

Re:Of course.

[dhasenan (758719)]

Google's interest mainly lies in being able to parse, represent, and produce files in the standard format, I think, regardless of who controls that format. They can certainly parse either format to get the majority of the textual content. It would be difficult to represent content in OOXML, but not ODF; and it is apparently significantly easier to modify ODF documents than OOXML, so I assume generating them is likely easier, too.

That's sufficient reason for Google to back ODF. Of course, the fact that it detracts from one of their competitors helps.

Re:Of course.

[Aceticon (140883)]

Microsoft could embrace ODF. They could integrate it with Microsoft Office, eliminate .DOC, and produce the best ODF tools in the market and maintain their dominance, even in Government. Open Office, while great for the breadth of its tools, is a complicated beast and can be overwhelming for general office staff.

One of the strongest reasons for the continued market share of MS Office is the network effects that come from the majority of people using the MS Office. It works like this:

• If a person or a company need to send a document to another person or company, they need to do it in such a way that the other side can at least read it and maybe even edit it.
• Since most senders have MS Office and they expect most recievers also have it, they will likelly send the document in Word Doc format. If the receiver doesn't have MS Office, and because of the problems that other text editors have in fully supporting that format, he now has a strong incentive to get MS Office.
• Conversely, a sender which does not have MS Office and sends a document in a format other than Word Doc, is likelly to be faced by a receiver which cannot read that document since they have MS Office and it doesn't support most other widespread document formats. The sender thus has an incentive to get MS Office.
• Lastly, a sender which does not have MS Office and tries to send a document in Word Doc format, is likelly to have the document not being fully compatible with MS Office, again due to the problems that other text editors have in fully supporting that format, and thus be displayed incorrectly in the reciver's machine. Again the sender thus has an incentive to get MS Office.

To maintain this virtuous circle (virtuous for MS, others might think of it as vicious), two factors need to be kept in place

• The most widely used format (at the moment, Word Doc format) can only be properly read and written by MS Word
• The most widely used document edition application (at the moment, MS Word) does not fully support any other competing document format.

To maintain this MS needs to:

• Try and avoid the emergence of another widely used document format.
• Make it impossible for other word edition applications to properly support Word Doc format.
• Do not properly support other widespread document formats in MS Word.

I believe we all can find examples of all the above actions.

Re:

[heinousjay (683506)]

Right now, they have the best I've used. The format lock-in is a nice bonus for them, but realistically there's nothing even close to Excel, and Word does the job at least as well or better than every competitor I've tried. Naturally, this is just my opinion, just as your post was only yours.

Re:

[daem0n1x (748565)]

I love Excel, but Word is a buggy piece of shit.

So much that they gave up on trying to fix the crashes, now they have created some "crash recovery" stuff that will recover the documents you lost with the last crash. If you're lucky, the "recovered" document will not be filled with hieroglyphs.

Re:Of course.

[Bert64 (520050)]

In what way?
What do old versions of msoffice do that cannot be represented by odf?
Most of the so called "compatibility" present in ooxml is poorly conceived, and hinges on adding extra complexity to the format when it would be much easier to simply mimick the behaviour in the conversion program and store the results in a standard way.

Re:Of course.

[cheater512 (783349)]

Yeah but Google provides all their stuff for free with ads.
Microsoft charges for the same thing.

Its a completely different business model.
Google doesnt have to screw over customers to make money.

IMHO they wont venture to the dark side of the force.

Re:

[MightyMartian (840721)]

Google doesnt have to screw over customers to make money.

Unless those customers are Chinese dissidents.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

I presume you are referring to the fact that Google is doing business in China, in compliance with the law. Since the law there is the Red Chinese government, this means Google is in compliance with a government that is, shall we say, unfriendly to Chinese dissidents.

Methinks you are a bit too harsh. AFAIK Google has complied with the orders for censorship, but have not done anything that helps track and punish people. IIRC Google declined to offer Google Mail because they knew the Red Chinese government

Re:Of course.

[Sj0 (472011)]

Thought experiment time!

Let's say you make the best strawberry jam in the world. In one city, the government is run by assholes, and so everyone has to mix in a bit of mud.

Even with the mud, you've still got the best strawberry jam in the world. It's the best the people of that city can get because of the assholes in government.

If you believe preference utilitarianism, where you want to make the most people happy, then it's obvious which choice is more moral; The people of China are going to be persecuted by unjust laws whether they've got a Chinese version of Google or not. Google is still the best product available, and I'm sure people are made happier through the fact that they can use it.

Now, you could say that Google could be propping up an immoral regime that oppresses it's own people, but it's unlikely that refusing to open Google.cn would suddenly make the communists see the error of their ways.

Simple win. Happy Chinese people vs. shallow meaningless victory

Google vs. Microsoft

[markdavis (642305)]

"With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass onto future generations.'"

EXACTLY what Microsoft does NOT want. I said it before, I will say it again... even if Microsoft does concede and add ODF support in MS-Office, one can almost bet it will be "broken" and Microsoft's formats will mysteriously work "better". The saga continues...

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

But is it different this time around? With HTML, CSS, Kerberos, Java, and all the other embrace,extend,extinguish campaigns they do, there is no ISO standard for HTML, CSS (Both w3c standards), Kerberos (just an RFC), and Java, (a standard which is just owned by another large corporation), for any of these other things. However, with ISO standards, isn't there a bit more enforcement of whether or not something adheres to the standard? Don't they actually check that products that say they meet some standar

Re:Google vs. Microsoft

[Zeinfeld (263942)]

However, with ISO standards, isn't there a bit more enforcement of whether or not something adheres to the standard? Don't they actually check that products that say they meet some standard actually meet the standard? Don't they take legal recourse against products that use there standards incorrectly? Maybe I'm just wrong here, but I don't think that ISO has built up such a large reputation for standards by just letting things slide, and having their name slapped on products that don't adhere to the standard.

Completely off base. Wrong on every count.

First off I think you need to understand what ISO is, ISO does not set standards. All ISO does is to recognize standards that have already been set by other standards bodies. So ISO 3103 is actually the same as BS 6008. ISO 9000 is BS 5750 and so on.

The IETF is actually accredited as an ISO member body and in theory RFCs could become ISO standards. They never have and never will as long as ISO charges money for its standards.

There is a compliance program for ISO 9000 but it isn't run by ISO. ISO 9000 consulting is one of the things that Y2K vampires went on to do after Dec 31 1999.

If you want standards go ISO 3103 is pretty critical yet you would be hard pressed to find any US companies that are in compliance. Still, least they don't use salt water any more.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[turing_m (1030530)]

Either that or they just embrace the ODF spec, extend it in proprietary ways that won't work in other office suites, and then extinguish it. That way MS Office will read everything but still produce documents that only work properly in Office.

Re:one flew over the cuckoos nest

[MightyMartian (840721)]

It wouldn't under normal circumstances, but there are a growing number of organizations (in particular various governments) who are demanding open document formats to protect valuable data from being stored in proprietary formats that might, at some point the future, become very difficult to access. In other words, in 2050 AD, the state of Massachusetts doesn't want to maintain an old copy of Windows 98 running Office 95, or have to run one virtualized on new hardware (if you can find an old Pentium emulator around) just so it can open old, archived documents. With a *useful* open document format, it's at least feasible that you could get your programmers or hire programmers to write software to extract or translate the data.

This is the importance to Microsoft of getting OOXML turned into an ISO standard. That way it can have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand they can declare to Massachusetts or any other government or organization demanding an open file format that they have this keen ISO standard, all the while having a format with so many patent-encumbered and proprietary hooks that no one but Microsoft could ever hope to write a program that could read or write it.

One only has to look at how incredibly important it is to Microsoft to get this enormous, crappy and completely unimplementable standard through ISO by the sheer efforts and willingness to risk public exposure to buy votes. If they can't get this past the ISO post, then the long-term viability of their business model is severely compromised.

Re:

[MightyMartian (840721)]

ODF is not a perfect standard. I don't believe there is such a thing as a perfect document standard. But what ODF is not is patent encumbered or encumbered by references to proprietary functionality.

Simply put, a reasonably competent programmer could implement ODF from the documentation. However, to implement OOXML would require both licensing to take care of any patent issues and access to internal Microsoft formats.

Re:one flew over the cuckoos nest

[SL Baur (19540)]

I still cannot understand how microsoft which I do believe has a considerable amount of self interest is creating obstacles primarily for themselves.

You're missing a big point. So long as it's a problem that only Microsoft can fix and bill people for, it's in Microsoft's best interest to do it that way.

I would love a clear explanation about why one standard is better than the other.

<Monty-Python>That's a fascinating question and I'd like to answer it in two ways if I may ... the first in my normal voice and the second in a silly, high-pitched whine</Monty-Python> Oh wait ...

Seriously, consider troff as a case example, a program which Brian Kernighan once called "50000 lines of uncommented unreadable C code written by the late Joe Osana" (I've tried to remember where I first read that, but haven't found it again and it's true enough as a reading of the source reveals).

troff wasn't exactly open source as we now define the term, but the markup language specification was fully documented. As a result, it was reimplemented in a variety of forms including the GPLed groff and it is still possible to make hardcopy of troff documents written decades ago.

Similarly, the TiVoized TeX (you are not allowed to make willy-nilly changes and redistribute them, but it's still open source), will also live forever.

Even more so than open source, an open specification is something that can never ever be taken away from you and it will live in the form of working code that implements it for as long as it is useful.

Contrast this with the OOXML "standard" which includes XML tags such as format this paragraph like Microsoft Word-95 (without explanation as to what that means) or use word spacing like Microsoft Word-97 for the Apple Macintosh (also without explanation as to what that means), etc.

Can anyone name a single proprietary counterexample that has lived at least as long as troff (over 30 years)? Open standards work and we have the track record to prove it.

If you are still confused ... since this is slashdot, I'll try a car analogy. A closed standard means you have to return your car to the factory in which it was made to have it serviced - a single point of failure and if the factory refuses to work on your particular car and says you must buy a new one instead, that is what you will have to do. An open standard means you can drive down the street and choose the nearest mechanic to work on your car. Fortunately, cars have open standards and the standard is only a Chilton's guide away http://www.chiltonsonline.com/ [chiltonsonline.com]

Re:one flew over the cuckoos nest

[MightyMartian (840721)]

Um, IBM just announced that they were going to start contributing to OpenOffice, and apparently are putting out their own ODF-compatible office suite based on OpenOffice. The industry is very much interested in ODF, because it represents for their development teams a fully accessible standard, and means the chance of not being beholden to Microsoft.

If ODF is adopted in a large way, then Microsoft would likely adopt it, then either break it (as they did with Kerberos) or put in lots of vendor-specific extensions to assure that only Microsoft products could deal with it (in short turn ODF in the new DOC). The open question is what would those organizations that are demanding an open standard do. I guess it depends on how savvey they are, on whether Microsoft can continue to throw its weight around, etc. But the fact is that ODF, though still maturing, represents the single biggest threat to Microsoft's business model in a decade, and they are putting a substantial amount of political effort into getting their own unworkable standard in place.

OOXML... what's the point?

[greenguy (162630)]

At my day job, my officemate just got Office 2007, which he was pleased as punch about... at first. Then he realized that no one else on any platform, using any software, can read Office 2007 files. He might as well write them in crayon, for what that's worth. He can select an earlier format, but then it saves as read-only.

At this point, my endless nudging about this whole Open Document Format thing is starting to make more sense for him. In fact, he'd be pleased to replace Word. However, he and some other co-workers are power Excel users, and are very reluctant to even consider replacing it.

Can anyone out there make a convincing case that Calc or Gnumeric are just as good as Excel, even for advanced users?

Re:OOXML... what's the point?

[Aminion (896851)]

I have a similar story about MS Office (in)compatibility.

A couple of weeks ago, I opened a PowerPoint 2003 file in PowerPoint 2007 (this loads PPT's compatibility mode), did some changes to the presentation and saved. Well, I tried to save when PPT complained that the changes that I've made to slides 1-12 weren't compatible with PPT 2003. Did I mention that the presentation only had 12 slides? Yeah, so no save for me. And what were those difficult to save changes? I changed the damn slides' design to one of the new fancy ones. That's all. I find it a bit ridiculous that not even MS can't make PTT 2007 compatible with previous versions.

Re:

[nstlgc (945418)]

So you explicitly state you used new features from 2007 ("the new fancy ones") and then you're surprised that all your slides are no longer 2003-compatible? Wow.

Re:

[ushering05401 (1086795)]

"Can anyone out there make a convincing case that Calc or Gnumeric are just as good as Excel, even for advanced users?"

Not I, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't install and play with the alternatives. Hell, if you feel so motivated you might even contribute some feedback to the dev community about what would motivate you to switch away from Excel.

Long story short, Excel is one of the few areas that MS actually delivers the goods. There are issues with Excel, but nothing like the issues that plague most o

Re:

[calebt3 (1098475)]

Hehe. I am taking a break from banging my head against the keyboard because of Excel 2007's incomparability. My files seem to be corrupted after being saved in 2003 format. I am glad I use OOo at home!

Re:

[ushering05401 (1086795)]

All 2007 Office products are having some difficulties right now, which is why my production environments still run older versions. Here is a fun one: a client patched their SBS 2003 box last week after not doing it for a while. Now everyone using Office 2007 is intermittently losing server connectivity, but the users who are still on Office 2k have experienced no problems.

Not only that, but a number of services disappeared from the SBS box and MS is apparently charging for a hotfix. I have not looked int

Re:

[AJWM (19027)]

Just so long as you don't accurately need to work with dates prior to March 1, 1900. Excel thinks that was Feb 29, the rest of the (Gregorian) world thinks that was Feb 28. Earlier dates are screwed up (by Excel) accordingly.

However, most people use spreadsheets as a quick'n'dirty database anyway. I bet in any given survey of .xls (or .ooc) files only a minority of them would actually contain any calculations.

Re:

[AJWM (19027)]

Argh.

s/.ooc/.ods/ above. Must be past my bedtime.

Re:

[evanbd (210358)]

Can anyone out there make a convincing case that Calc or Gnumeric are just as good as Excel, even for advanced users?

(I haven't worked with Gnumeric much, so this mostly applies to Calc)

I would, except that they're not even close. I run Linux, I use OpenOffice.org, and at work I've done some serious Excel work. There are a couple features I like in Calc, but nothing major. However, there are a lot of things that Excel does better. Graphs are a big one. Circular reference handling and goal seek /

Re:

[RobBebop (947356)]

Can anyone out there make a convincing case that Calc or Gnumeric are just as good as Excel, even for advanced users?

I've tried to do complicated stuff in Calc, but never for too long -- it just gets painful.

You lose. You answered the wrong question. You receive +0 points.

Here's a somewhat trivial thing that I found Calc did right, that Excel fudged up. I could copy from a table online and paste it into Calc in spreadsheet form. In Excel, it refused to go in despite various "Paste Special" attempts. I'm not going to say that this always fails in Excel - but during the specific instance I had last week - I was utterly stunned when (a) Excel didn't get it, then (b) Calc got it on the first try.

For me,

Re:OOXML... what's the point?

[lordofthechia (598872)]

I use calc for lab calculations for my engineering classes involving complex equations (as in imaginary numbers), lots of plots and all the fun equations that we get to play with, I haven't run into anything yet that I wasn't able to do in calc that I could previously do in Excel.

I also use it for scheduling (calendar type functions with conditional statements, conditional formatting, strewn throughout) to automatically generate events if certain criteria are made. I know, I need to find something better than a spreadsheet for that... But yeah, I find it nice and robust.

There were some minor adjustments as far as entering equations, but it's been so long since I transitioned that I don't even remember what syntax differences I had to adjust to.

Re:

[Zeinfeld (263942)]

At my day job, my officemate just got Office 2007, which he was pleased as punch about... at first. Then he realized that no one else on any platform, using any software, can read Office 2007 files. He might as well write them in crayon, for what that's worth. He can select an earlier format, but then it saves as read-only.

My copy of Office 2007 works just fine. I currently only have 2007 on one machine but its working fine when I transfer files to the other machine.

Only problem I have at the moment is

Re:

[p0tat03 (985078)]

One problem that OSS still needs to overcome is backwards compatibility. I have no problems with converting to open source office apps, and help out the movement, so to speak, but I require back compatibility. That means Word and Excel documents that my peers create *must* work competently, and that inter-operability between the two apps must be near total.

The last time I opened a Word 2004 doc in OpenOffice the result was a complicated mess. Stylings were messed up, spacing was messed up, fonts were chan

Re:

[MightyMartian (840721)]

You do realize, I trust, that people have similar problems when trying to open older Office documents in new versions of Office. Not even Microsoft can maintain absolute backwards compatibility. That being said, I've never had any problems opening Excel and Word documents in OpenOffice.

Re:OOXML... what's the point?

[MillionthMonkey (240664)]

If you and your friend are so bright you could go into the options and set Office 2007 to save in Office 97-2003 compatability mode.

What part of "he can select an earlier format, but then it saves as read-only" did you not understand? Office 97-2003 compatibility mode has three different meanings in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, [slideshare.net] and the one in Excel prevents documents with "new features" from being saved to a file that can be edited by a previous version of Excel.

Did I miss something?

[Cassini2 (956052)]

The fast track process does not officially end until after the next ballot resolution meeting (BRM). According to the ISO press release http://www.iso.org/iso/newsandmedia/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1070 [iso.org], if Microsoft scrapes together enough support at the BRM, then the OOXML standard will be accepted.

On the other hand, if Microsoft doesn't get the support at the BRM, then OOXML is out of the fast track process and referred back to committee for development.

badsummary

[achurch (201270)]

The fast-track process isn't over yet; all ISO has decided is that OOXML didn't pass the initial vote. There's still (probably, unless Microsoft backs down at the last minute) a Ballot Resolution Meeting to come, where the committee looks at all the comments received with the votes and tries to resolve them. If the various national boards decide that the result is good enough and vote for OOXML, it can still become a standard in the near future.

In fairness, of course

[achurch (201270)]

TFA itself talks about "not approving the fast-track", which isn't quite the same as "not fast-tracking" OOXML period but is still misleading. (Fancy little Preview button down there. I wonder what it does?)

Re:

[Zeinfeld (263942)]

The fast-track process isn't over yet; all ISO has decided is that OOXML didn't pass the initial vote. There's still (probably, unless Microsoft backs down at the last minute) a Ballot Resolution Meeting to come, where the committee looks at all the comments received with the votes and tries to resolve them. If the various national boards decide that the result is good enough and vote for OOXML, it can still become a standard in the near future.

So you mean that Microsoft can lobby No votes to become Yes v

Re:

[achurch (201270)]

So you mean that Microsoft can lobby No votes to become Yes votes after meeting the issues raised in their comments?

Indeed they can; in fact, turning "no with comments" votes into "yes" votes is the whole purpose of the BRM--though normally the no's will be "no, because there are a few things that need tweaking", not "no, this is a POS that shouldn't be a standard in the first place".

On the other hand, "yes" votes can turn into "no" votes as well. I imagine the national boards that were fooled by Microsoft's "yes with comments" spiel will not be amused . . .

Google Pleased with MS smackdown

[MrCopilot (871878)]

No Kidding.

A little premature.

[AJWM (19027)]

The ISO decision to not fast-track this won't be made until the ballot resolution meeting (BRM) in February, where they look at the comments, decide which can be resolved, and re-vote. If it passes that vote (and you can be sure MSFT is working on that), the fast-track succeeds. The ISO press release that TFA links to explains this. (I guess someone at Google has reading comprehension issues.)

It ain't over yet.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

They have accomplished many things. You have accomplished nothing. You are a nobody that no one cares about. That's the difference.

Re:So why don't they actualy support ODF in search

[by Anonymous Coward]

Because 'odf' isn't an actual file extension used for ODF documents...try odt (text), odp (presentation), etc...

Re:

[emurphy42 (631808)]

They don't support any of those either, alas.

Re:So why don't they actualy support ODF in search

[Rakishi (759894)]

WTF are you smoking, yes they do:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=filetype%3Aodt+the&btnG=Search [google.com]

Re:

[emurphy42 (631808)]

Thanks for the correction. That works with any filetype (try it), but their Advanced Search form only covers certain types (PDF PS DWF KML KMZ XLS PPT DOC RTF SWF).

Re:

[Rakishi (759894)]

Except only certain file types get properly identified and parsed into html. The fact that it's not in the drop down list is a minor problem likely due to the relative lack of popularity of these formats right now.

Re:Google's "hypocrisy"...?

[Rakishi (759894)]

1. You're redundant: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=300601&cid=20646489 [slashdot.org]
2. You have no idea what you're talking about: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=300601&cid=20646837 [slashdot.org]

Re:

[MightyMartian (840721)]

Does anyone have a factual list of Office features that can't map to ODF? I mean, besides "justifying the way Office 97 does", which doesn't meaningfully constitute a "feature".