Google's Web-based word-processing and spreadsheet applications are no match, and certainly not a threat to the Microsoft Office System. Antoine Leblond Corporate Vice President of Office Productivity Applications managed to downplay Google Docs & Spreadsheets as a viable competitor or an alternative to Office. Leblond attributed Google with a diminished role, commenting that the Mountain View company is no different from all the other Office competitors that have failed to make a difference.

"The simple argument that 'this is good enough for 90 percent of what we do' has fallen on its face over and over and over again," explained Leblond. "When it comes to mission-critical things and key pieces of how people run their businesses, the threshold is higher."

While Google is marketing a Software-as-a-Service strategy, Microsoft's position is inevitably tied to the desktop as the Office Suite is generating more than a third of the company's income. Microsoft is scheduled to launch the 2007 Office System on November 30, 2006 concomitantly with windows Vista. Office Live is illustrative of Microsoft's strategy to combine software with online services.

"Free software has an appealing ring to it, but free software has been around for a while now and it turns out free doesn't trump the software doing what people need it to do," added Leblond. "We went from the world of 15 years ago where we would release the software and people would be sleeping outside the stores to go buy the boxes the next day to a much more regular rhythm."