Amazon Takes on Microsoft, Google with Its Own Suite of Office Productivity Apps

Megalith

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Google Docs is huge and Microsoft Office is even bigger, so it will be interesting to see if Amazon can make any kind of dent in the world of office productivity software. To start, the company is improving its email-calendar and file storage-collaboration apps to lure in corporate customers. Amazon’s Chime app could also serve as a Skype or Hangouts alternative.

…sources in the know have said that Amazon’s plans are still in their infancy, but the first steps will include improving AWS’s existing WorkMail and WorkDocs applications. These apps, which offer calendar and file storage functionality, have yet to catch on with customers, and in their current form pale in comparison to what’s available from Microsoft and Google. It’s also unclear how Amazon will flesh out its suite, either with its own word processing and spreadsheet tools, to the tune of Microsoft’s Word and Excel, or if they will take a different route thanks to a recent update to their AppStream service.
 
Ah yes, so Amazon has fully reached that stage in the business life cycle...
 
I'll only entertain them if they are entirely stand alone, including the email client.
Web based anything, nope.
 
Ah yes, so Amazon has fully reached that stage in the business life cycle...


No. I will repeat this till the day I die from my Amazon Prime delivered junk food. Amazon's business model is 100% involvement in your life. They want EVERY aspect of your life to go through Amazon. This is different then other companies like Microsoft or Google or Apple. They only want total control of certain aspects of your life.

Amazon is A ---> Z

Amazon-Logo_Feature.jpg
 
No. I will repeat this till the day I die from my Amazon Prime delivered junk food. Amazon's business model is 100% involvement in your life. They want EVERY aspect of your life to go through Amazon. This is different then other companies like Microsoft or Google or Apple. They only want total control of certain aspects of your life.

Amazon is A ---> Z

Amazon-Logo_Feature.jpg

Holy shit. I just now realized the a to z in their logo that I've stared at a million times before.
 
Don't worry, I too had the same "it was in my face the whole time" moment at one point.

Now I'm not saying they are some horrible company. But what I am saying is that when you look at the long term goal of all the services they offer you have to wonder what they will NOT be involved with in your life.
 
I dunno, I've tried a number of alternatives but when it comes to spreadsheets.. nothing compares to excel. For me, it's worth the cost of it, everything else I've tried comes up short in so many areas.
 
Why does there need to be more? MS Office is good for what it does. The problem with things like Open Office, LibreOffice, etc. is that they're open source. It sounds good in theory, but you can never get people to agree on anything. One thing Steve Jobs was right about is that people don't know what they want.
 
No web based apps for me. At home I almost never have to generate any kind of documents so Libre Office is more than adequate. I have used it to view docs from work and so far it has rendered them all perfectly. In fact, it does a better job on some of our 'old' doc files then Word 2010 does.
 
Funny how some are complaining that they don't want another productivity offering and others are saying anything to break free from MS.

The way I see it, the more competition the better as long as the documents are interoperable. Competition plus interoperability = Win.
 
A to Z is like the FedEx arrow. When you do finally see it it becomes all you can see.
 
A lot of you are saying "no web based for me" and I also see a lot of privacy concerns listed. How do you guys feel about something like sandstorm? Sandstorm.io lets you run your own sandboxed web apps on your own hardware
 
A lot of you are saying "no web based for me" and I also see a lot of privacy concerns listed. How do you guys feel about something like sandstorm? Sandstorm.io lets you run your own sandboxed web apps on your own hardware
What benefit does that give?
 
In all fairness the a to z was there when it was just about books which applies better and is a little less menacing. While I agree their current strategy is very different than books, they're just growing a cash rich business that no longer has a purpose so they keep filling niches (investing) until they get it good enough to compete than move on... Like a two year old deciding on what to play next.
 
Competition is always good. That being said, MS Office is excellent and it'll be hard to compete against it and Google docs.
 
Oh goodie, another shoddy software product from Amazon. If it is like every other software product from Amazon, it will be worse than what is offered by a competing small start up.
 
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