Hot off the heels of yesterday’s announcement that Skydrive had been successfully rebranded as OneDrive, Microsoft today announced Office Online which the company hopes will simplify it’s offering of office web applications. In a blog post explaining the changes Amanda Lefebvre explains "We heard from customers that the inclusion of Apps in our name was confusing,". She goes on to explain how customers were unsure of whether these apps were supposed to be installed rather than used online.
Today’s release of Office Online doesn’t bring with it any new features it’s all about making it clearer and simpler for customers to find the tools they need. The new website which can be found at office.com uses a simple tile layout to highlight all of the online office services that are available online. Together with the recently revamped OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) it’s clear that Microsoft is looking for a slice of the pie that Google has with it’s Drive and Docs service.
Microsoft is also working on putting all of it’s template systems for Word, Excel and Powerpoint into the Office Online service to make it easier for customers to easily get started with the help of hundreds of online templates. Whilst today’s improvements are quite minor in terms of new features, the changes should go a long way to making Microsoft’s Office applications much easier and simpler to use especially for new customers. For more information on today’s changes you can read the full announcement post on Office Blogs website.