When Google received criticism from many users after disclosing that the company utilizes software to scan content of emails, specifically for the purpose of targeting paid ads for users, its rival Microsoft took the floor to criticize Google.
In a Scroogled campaign, Microsoft called the scanning activity of Gmail an invasion of privacy and note that its own email service Outlook does otherwise.
Yet, is Microsoft abandoning its Scroogled campaign? In an interesting twist, Microsoft launches its Office Online to the Chrome Web Store of Google.
"Office Online works great in all browsers, but for those of you who use Chrome, you can now add Word Online, PowerPoint Online and OneNote Online to your Chrome App launcher to create new Office documents online with a single click from your desktop," said Kaberi Chowdhury, Office Online's technical product manager, in a blog post.
This move gives users of Chrome the ability to include Word Online, OneNote Online and PowerPoint Online in their Chrome App launchers. Excel Online, the blog post said, will follow suit.
Word Online permits users to make comments in the document while it's in editing mode, thus allowing for simultaneous changes among multiple users. The company said feedback on the document has been considered a key requirement for Office Online users, a reason for its inclusion. Endnotes and footnotes have been simplified as well; users can now add these notes inline, especially for those who use the service for reports and research papers. Making lists has become simpler and smarter, too, and works exactly like in the desktop Word.
For PowerPoint Online, he disclosed that the company modified the text editor to make the layout appear more like the final result even while in the mode of editing the slides.
"High-fidelity viewing of presentations in PowerPoint Online has always been a high priority for us. But a high-fidelity view of your slides is also important when you're creating them," he said.
The company optimized the performance and video playback, too. Users can now play back embedded YouTube videos as well as speed up the slides' progression in the editor.
Though many prefer putting their lists on their laptops, tablets or mobile phones for clutter-free reference, there's just something about getting these things printed that still helps other people in organizing -- and OneNote Online understands this need.
Although Excel Online has yet to be completely rolled out, the company disclosed that it's working on the capability to edit and delete existing comments and insert new ones. It also added better support for documents with Visual Basic for Applications. Now, users can edit these VBA-based spreadsheets without having the need to remove or break the VBA in the document. To help find important commands in a drop-down list, Excel Online also adds a "Tell Me" functionality to assist users.
With all these developments, is Microsoft really abandoning the Scroogled campaign against Google? Well, it's also developing, and is a story not to be missed.
