alt Hacker News> I know, and I'm not saying that EU will do any different, but this is not necessarily an absolute gold-standard benchmark
My point was that even with Google's money, they're still not on par with MS even if the Office files format has been standardized for a number of years. And if you extrapolate that to any other technology, you will find out very fast that it is very expensive to come up with a replacement solution that will actually be embraced by potential customers.
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> My point was that even with Google's money, they're still not on par with MS even if the Office files format has been standardized for a number of years.
The counterpoint is that they don't need to be on par :-/ The problem is that individual procurement decision-makers are incentivised to go with the Microsoft suite, not that the alternatives aren't a good enough replacement.
On the other hand, there is not much office work which could not have been done almost as effective in office 97.
I don't think the right explanation of MS monopoly is technical superiority, but rather the natural forces of monopoly. They are extremely hard to break with free market competition, but can definitely be broken with legislation.
I am convinced that 99% of office use can be replaced with competitors if needed, and it would work out OK.