logoalt Hacker News

vovavilitoday at 1:27 PM4 repliesview on HN

>And Office suite wise, it took Google about 15 years of pouring money into Google Docs to be almost as good as the MS offering.

And yet they _still_ don't have a desktop client for hotkey-driven and very fast-paced workflows, meaning that any serious professional spreadsheet work is still a Microsoft monopoly. If even the US market with all its favorable conditions can't deliver a competing product after years of trying, a fragmented, brain-drained, overregulated and high-tax continent attempting the same is just hopes and dreams.


Replies

throwway1922today at 1:42 PM

Wrong point. Nothing wrong with browser based clients. Even if they build some desktop client, by the time google (or anyone) does that compatibility Microsoft will change their formats. MS even removed their apps from ChromeOS to make it so. The issue is you can't fix MS. regulators are just too rich to care.

It is even the same as Office for Mac is not 100% compatible with office for windows (or so called CoPilot AI whatever)

input_shtoday at 1:46 PM

I still can't write a Word document in Markdown, but I can do so using Google Docs.

The difference between us is that I know I'm within 0,1% of people that actually cases about this specific use case.

blauditoretoday at 1:42 PM

What hotkey-driven and fast-paced workflows are you referring to? I used to be an Office user, now G Docs, and I hardly miss anything. Hotkeys do exist, and more complex stuff can be automated quite well with AppsScript.

Maybe I'm not enough of a power user, but these things often sound to me like the 0.1% productivity boosts that are nice to have, but often hardly relevant in the grand scheme of things.

dopidopHN2today at 1:44 PM

I've seen US citizen swich in mass to cryptpad and protondoc over ICE being in their town and then wanting to deliver grocery to their neighbors.

Proton seems to have stick. It's far less feature full than google doc but I started to receive link to proton doc outside of a immigration context.

Also, I do spreadsheet for a living and my last two job were not providing a office licence ( no need )