Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has dismissed efforts by companies such as Google and Zimbra to take on Microsoft's Office suite with online personal productivity application suites.
The Microsoft Outlook personal productivity software, he noted at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, is available on a phone or as a rich client application in a browser.
"We think of our job as to deliver productivity," he said. "Outlook is whatever best suits a given user at a given time. What we will do is focus in on delivering the experience and taking advantage of all technology models."
Google's hosted applications might be good for "a few people to collaborate on fairly simple thing", Ballmer said. However, he noted that if users want to do something they would do in Word or Excel. "Today, Word and Excel is the best place to do it."
Ballmer also indirectly poked at Google when asked to compare Microsoft's fledgling search business with the big kids on the block. Noting that Microsoft's search business today is akin to a three-year-old "playing basketball with the 12-year-olds, you're going to dunk on the other guys some day".
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