Microsoft Office for Better or for Worse

Since its initial release nearly thirty years ago, the package of software applications known as "Microsoft Office" has taken over the business sector across the globe, controlling roughly 90% of the market. I remember, as early as second grade, sitting down in front of a desktop computer with a .doc file and typing away. At the same time that elementary schoolers like myself were learning the software, businesses were adopting it too. Most of a company's text files could be found in the .doc format. This puts Microsoft Office in a unique position for millions and millions of files are saved in their style of document, and if a company tried to open these documents in another application, it is almost guaranteed it would not look the same as when they initially saved it.

You may be able to tell from my last blog post that I do not care for Microsoft Office and much prefer Google Drive, but as an individual, this switch is easy for me to make. Students are not the primary target for Microsoft Office because they do not use it as an entire system, they tend to solely use individual applications for their own personal use. At this point in time, businesses are so ingrained in the Microsoft system they see no reason to go through the hassle of switching. More importantly, however, a package of applications has yet to come along that seems it could really topple the behemoth that is Microsoft Office.