The beta version of Office Live Workspace has one million users just six months after launch, Microsoft announced Wednesday as it released some minor improvements to the service.
“It takes companies years to attract a strong customer base such as this,” boasted Microsoft Office product manager Kirk Gregersen. The rapid pace of adoption is a sign of a pent-up market for online access to documents, Gregersen said. Users are “looking for ways to resolve the complexities of their work, school and home projects through a range of choices,” he said.
Office Live Workspace is not an online version of Microsoft’s shrink-wrapped Office suite but a way for owners of the desktop software to upload, share and collaborate on documents.
The announcement came on the eve of the Office 2.0 Conference though Friday in San Francisco, where productivity consultant David Allen was the keynote speaker and more than a dozen startups are demonstrating their products.
Among Microsoft’s enhancements are an activity panel, the ability to get e-mail notifications of changes, unique URLs so documents can be bookmarked and linked, and improved support for the Firefox browser.
But many proponents of online office-productivity applications remain underwhelmed with Microsoft’s offering, which is expected to leave beta status by the end of the year. A typical comment comes from Cnet’s Rafe Needleman: “Yay, Microsoft. Now go back and build the service we want, please.”
Ironically, given Microsoft’s dominance in the desktop productivity space, the burden now appears to be on Redmond to catch up with Google Docs, which, although it can’t compete with the sophistication of Microsoft Office, provides real-time online collaboration in a browser for free.
“I believe Microsoft could make an honest Google Docs competitor without killing its Microsoft Office business,” Needleman wrote. “Eventually, Microsoft will have to. So it might be…