More writing on the wall for Microsoft

My friends at Microsoft probably wont agree but news like this is really bad news for them. I mean who cares about a few million Norwegians mandating use of open document formats, what about the other 99,9% of us on this planet? Well I think the important thing is that Norway is definitely an innovator in Europe and I expect it will now only be a matter of time before the EU itself (yes, I know Norway is not an EU member) follows suit. That will bring a mandate to member states with 500 million or so people and 30 percent or more of the worlds GDP (and going ever higher as the dollar declines in value!)

Considering how the Europeans successfully prevailed against Microsoft in their anti-trust lawsuits unlike the USA which largely failed I really don't think they will think twice about following such a mandate. Yes it will cost lots of money to enact and follow through, yes it will be a major headache and generate mountains of paperwork for eurocrats but that is exactly the kind of thing they love. And don't imagine for a moment that once Europe has embraced open formats that Asia will far behind.

Really I find it hard to imagine that in 10 years time, or even less, Microsofts flagship office suite will be using its proprietary formats any more. Given that they have finally started spewing out PDF files can it really be that long before they start reading and writing ODF files? At that point the battle is over really because it will be harder and harder for die hard Microsoft users to ignore the open source alternatives like OpenOffice. Long before then most home users will have realized they don't need to shell out $200 or more to edit a Word document, and once home users realize that they will take that knowledge to work with them too and question Office dependency there too.

Microsoft is clearly struggling hard to create deep layers of value-add to their proprietary formats with stuff like Office Live and SharePoint - none of which will embrace non-Microsoft formats any time soon. However such online collaboration apps are exactly the field that Google and others are chasing after. And you can only go so far in their development before you start treading on the tails of online app suites like Salesforce.com and other more generic business process apps - areas of which Microsoft holds a much smaller share, if any.

So really I see this Norway announcement as hugely significant and will be watching closely for the next country to follow suit.