Microsoft announced new features today to Docs.com, a Facebook app in closed beta that lets users create multi-author Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations for free.
The new features themselves are not earth-shattering, but they show how the team behind Docs.com continues to improve and innovate. The question is, how far will Microsoft go to make Docs.com better before it starts to undermine its flagship Office products?
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Docs.com is part of Microsoft's response to Google Docs, the Web app that revolutionized collaborative editing and introduced people to the idea of letting documents live in the cloud, for free.
Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, outlook and OneNote, costs $279.99 - which seems staggering in the age of so many free Web-based productivity tools.
Microsoft seems to be hoping that Docs.com will convert free users into paid users of Microsoft Office. The company never misses a chance to mention that Docs.com is "built on Microsoft Office 2010" and has "full compatibility with Microsoft Office:"
"The fact that we've been able to adapt the Office 2010 'Web Apps' technology to work directly with Facebook truly speaks to the flexibility and power not just of the Facebook platform, but also of the Office system's rich 'contextual collaboration' capabilities."
Docs.com is just one front in the Microsoft-Google battle over office products. Docs.com seems to be combining the large, engaged (and young!) user base of Facebook with the technology of Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Workspace is a collection of web apps for sharing and collaborating on docs saved on the Web, available for personal use for free.
The features announced today include the ability to tag a document with keywords, search for documents by keywords and authors, and a few tweaks to the interface. The changes are evidence of Microsoft's genuine push to give users a free, Web-based alternative to Google Docs - without making it into an alternative to Microsoft Office 2010.
Docs.com is still in closed beta. To get an idea of how it works, check out the video tutorial.
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