“We have over a half a billion customers world-wide and what we hear from them is that they really want the power of the web without compromise. They want collaboration without compromise.

“And what they tell us today is that going to the web often means they sacrifice fidelity, functionality and the quality of the content they care about. We knew that if and when we were ever going to bring applications into a web environment, we needed to do the hard work first because we hold such a high bar”

via BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft Office takes to the web.

Microsoft has just unveiled the next version of its Office suite of productivity programs, Office 2010, and announced that it will include free, online lightweight versions of its four most popular software programs – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

The suite will be released next year and it is a direct shot at Google’s suite of web-based office applications, Google Docs. This battle and the trend of software going online into a cloud will be interesting to follow in the upcoming months.

The one thing is sure, it is the customer that will win as these companies will do everything they can to improve their products so that the customer ends up using them instead of the competitor.

Cloud computing is one of the hottest trend in technology and with the rise of the netbooks and the announcement of Google Chrome OS, it is slowly going mainstream. We will definitely hear much more about cloud computing as it becomes more advanced and available to more people, but here is an overview of what it exactly is and will be.

But what is cloud computing?

• Store files online, access them from everywhere

Instead of storing all your files on a personal computer at home, cloud computing allows you to store these files remotely online, on a server owned by a company like Google. And these files can be accessed from anywhere, at any time on any device you own. Think of Microsoft Outlook vs Google Mail.

• All software online, no need to buy or install

It is not just about the storage. In cloud computing software for word processing, picture editing and more are all available online, so there is no need to buy the product and install it on your computer. It is just there and it works. Think of Microsoft Office vs Google Docs.

• Minimal user interface

The user interface in cloud computing is minimal and it stays out of your way. Most of the user experience takes place on the web. Your data mostly resides on the network, not on your personal computer. You just connect to network services for storage of personal files and for software to run.

• Nothing to backup

Your data is accessible wherever you are and as majority of your data and software you use is located online, you have nothing to back up and nothing to migrate when you buy a new computer. You have nothing to take with you and you have the same user experience from any computer in the world. Just log in from a different machine and there’s all your stuff.

Google Chrome Operating System or in the other words Google Chrome OS has just been announced. This Web OS which will mostly consist of Google web apps as native operative system apps will change the way we spend our time on our personal computers and the way we spend time online.

TheChromeCloud blog will focus on providing all the latest information on the new Web OS, also knows as Cloud Computing, trend. All the news, all the announcements, all the reviews, all the tips, all the tutorial you can imaging to make you more your operative system more web-centric and to improve your productivity.

Read the original Google announcement about the Google Chrome OS