Spreadsheets became Excel. Presentation software, if it was ever known by such a name, was simply PowerPoint. Long before Google's preeminence in search, Microsoft dominated business and personal software with a suite known as Office. The company launches its latest version, Office 2010, on Wednesday in New York — and the stakes couldn't be higher.The lucrative franchise is threatened by a changing market spouting a four-letter word: free. The biggest threat comes from Google, specifically Google Docs, Web applications accessible from any computer. Because of Google, Microsoft has been forced to make a free ad-supported version called Office Web Apps.Google's software is unlikely to depose Office, especially among heavy business users who write reports, draw up corporate budgets and put together sales presentations. But Office 2010 does represent a slow tipping of the entire technology industry, from a PC world Microsoft long has dominated to a cloud-computing world, where software roams free on the computer, phone, tablet and television, and the old ways of making money are changing. "We think it's actually an opportunity for us," said Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft Business Division, which makes Office. "We have an opportunity to draw in many, many people who today are not engaged in the Office experience, or have not paid for software along the way, or are on very old software." Wednesday's event at NBC Studios in New York will mark the first day business customers can buy copies of Office 2010 that gets installed on PCs. The software will start selling in stores to small businesses and consumers sometime in June. The free Office Web Apps also will be available to consumers in June. Read more: The Seattle Times
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