> Office is much superior to any open source and even paid alternatives
Bullshit. The only reason to use Microsoft Office is compatibility with Microsoft Office files. What improvements have been made in the last 10 years in Outlook and Word? Nothing. There are some new bugs that didn't exist before, but no advancements. That's what lack of competition gives you.
Objectively there have been an absolutely enormous number of "improvements" to MS office (including Outlook and Word) over the last decade. The biggest is probably cloud/simultaneous editing capabilities. See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-life-hacks/sto... .
Interestingly, there is a decreased emphasis on the file format- the opposite of your point. In addition to cloudy used on mobile devices, sharepoint, etc; since 2007 or so Word has used docx, which has better cross compatibility with other suites, even Google Docs: https://www.howtogeek.com/304622/what-is-a-.docx-file-and-ho... .
My personal use patterns- I use LibreOffice quite a bit, Google Docs rarely, and MS Office daily for work. Outlook and Word have changed a lot and continue to evolve (watch for copilot integrations).
Enormous number of improvements? That link shows barely any improvements. If there was healthy competition you'd actually see enormous number of improvements.
> The biggest is probably cloud/simultaneous editing capabilities.
That was in response to Google Docs and is more than 10 years old (added in 2013?).
The bar for Outlook was so abysmally low- and even today it is pretty much the IE6 of mail clients. But good news! With the New Outlook, it won't even be a mail client at all.
Exactly. Especially for contract negotiations & track changes with a counterparty. Only MS can figure out their screwed up document formats. Office is terrible these days, it is so damned slow. I remember Office 97, so fast and responsive on a Pentium 90, now back in the dark ages of slow bloatware and network latency. It takes so long to open a document, I forget what I was doing the week I double clicked on the file.
> What improvements have been made in the last 10 years in Outlook and Word?
Microsoft Search makes it much easier to find stuff. Word got near real-time co-editing (or perhaps that was closer to 11 years ago) and later (<10 years ago) got real-time co-editing. Which is such a huge game changer for users with complex documents that GDocs falls down on.
Lots of other improvements in Excel and PowerPoint, data access/visualization, various presenter modes, and then you've got that AI stuff all mixed in.
Microsoft Search? Where is that exactly? Search is the biggest weak point of Microsoft products. Try finding anything in Teams. Now try the Search box at the bottom of Hacker News. See the difference?
Microsoft's revenue from Office was $211B in 2023. That's almost a quarter of a TRILLION dollars in annual revenue. And for that you got what? A presenter mode and data access? Imagine if that revenue was split between three equally strong competitors. That would have spurred innovation.
If you're unaware of what features/functionality are part of the M365 suite, why are you commenting that it is stagnant?
It seems like you're discussing a subject you're objectively unfamiliar with. And no, of course the couple things I mentioned aren't all that's happened in the M365/M365 Apps space. They're what came to top of mind. It doesn't mean they're the biggest or best features.
I use Teams every day and I know exactly how much its search sucks. I am very familiar with how Microsoft doesn't innovate, does not have a history of innovation, and only copies competitors' successful products and features. Unless you were born yesterday you should too.
While I'll agree the "eye candy updates" may not be there (apart from marketing-driven AI additions and visual updates), there are some big features that aren't visible until you enter the enterprise space. For example, Purview Information Protection [1] and Data Classification integration [2] make data protection, audits/compliance a no-brainer, and are _extremely_ compelling arguments for an integrated suite at the CISO level.
(The downside of course is this is a single-source stack, which can be a risk in of itself)
I have no real background in Libre (apart from using it, which I enjoy), but from cursory searches, there doesn't appear to be equivalent features available (very happy to be wrong here FWIW). Are there alternatives in this space?
Bullshit. The only reason to use Microsoft Office is compatibility with Microsoft Office files. What improvements have been made in the last 10 years in Outlook and Word? Nothing. There are some new bugs that didn't exist before, but no advancements. That's what lack of competition gives you.