Microsoft has rebranded its Office Web Apps simply as Office Online. Along with a rebrand, Office Online also gets a new look that more closely resembles Microsoft’s desktop Office suite. Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, Excel, and more are available at Office.com, which is certainly easy to remember.
Microsoft is going through a sort of revival recently beginning with its rebranding of SkyDrive as OneDrive due to a trademark dispute. OneDrive offers 7GB of online storage for free but offers ways for users to earn more storage space through referrals and downloading its mobile apps.
With a new name, Office Online hopes to gain new users or convince Google Drive users to move to Microsoft’s service instead. Google Drive and Office Online are very similar products and offer the same basic experience. Edit your documents online and have them available anywhere you go. However, Office Online has the distinct advantage of desktop Office support for things like file types and templates. While Drive struggles to make .docx files work with its service, Office Online works flawlessly.
But with competitors like Google Drive and Evernote, do consumers have enough reason to leave those services for Office Online? Many users have already transitioned to the web for their productivity suites and it appears that Microsoft is playing catch-up with Office Online.
