Sabeer Bhatia launches Live Documents -online office suite
By Madhur Kapoor on Nov 22, 2007 in Tech
Remember Sabeer Bhatia, the co founder of Hotmail, the first ever web based email service. Now he is back with another service called Live Documentswhich has all the features of Microsoft Office 2007 and is available for free online.
Live Documents is a fully featured online office suite whose functionality is equivalent to that of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It has been developed using Java and Flash and allows users to access and edit there documents using any browser from anywhere and from any platform. The interface is flash based and offers the users a rich visual experience in doing there task.
It will also be available as a standalone desktop application which will wrap around the existing Microsoft Office and will add some collaborative capabilities to it. Your Microsoft Office wont be a standalone application anymore as it will enable users to share there documents online which can be edited by several users at the same time. It will also have several security and access control for better management.The Live Documents desktop client will also ensure offline access to documents - a feature which is not there in current office online applications.
Users can work online as well offline based on what they like and there work will be synchronized between online and offline versions. Live Documents is currently available in preview mode on an invitation basis. You can register for an invite here. Though i dont think it will have the same success as that of Hotmail, it is still a good product to look forward too. Wonder what Microsoft will be thinking? Will they purchase it too like in case of hotmail?
hey, i never knew who sabeer bhatia was lol. Thanks for it and would definitely give Live Documents a try.
Haris | Nov 22, 2007 | Reply
While it’s good that we’ve free alternatives to popular Office suites, I think the online versions like Google or Zoho is not convenient . If you can afford/want to use pirate version, we should turn to OSS alternatives which are as good as these paid office suites.
Ashwin | Nov 22, 2007 | Reply
It seems like a nice venture but I doubt that Microsoft will snap this one up as they already have their own set of Office Live Suite online
Keith Dsouza | Nov 22, 2007 | Reply
Interesting, but isint there already something like this?
Qwerty_ | Nov 23, 2007 | Reply
yes there is: Nivio online desktop
Shashank | Nov 23, 2007 | Reply
@Keith
I guess you are right but if it turns out hugely popular, you never know
Madhur Kapoor | Nov 23, 2007 | Reply
The success of this one will depend on how popular this is going to be. Looks like a good effort.
Nirmal | Nov 23, 2007 | Reply
There’ll be some tough competition! There’s already services like Zoho and Google Docs, but if the features are much better, I can see it becoming popular.
Aseem Kishore | Nov 23, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for sharing like this. I would likes to add this on my blog also
Jp | Nov 24, 2007 | Reply
Hm, I wasn’t aware that something like this exists. I try to understand this… Does this means I can read my excel file without actually having Microsoft Excel installed?
chuck norris dude | Nov 27, 2007 | Reply
It’s all about marketing. He definitely has enough money to put this project in the right direction and if he gets enough feed back I’m sure he will make changes and get the best product on the market. He will probably charge for it in the future.
Chad | Nov 29, 2007 | Reply