I need to learn this skill of producing nothing and pretending I have. It seems to be very rewarding, financially speaking.

They list a bunch of companies under the heading "All these companies work with the same technology" on their landing page. I think it's quite scummy, and very non-impressive when you see it.

LibreOffice came from OpenOffice which was StarOffice which was developed in Germany.

It also possibly sets a false expectation of perfect compatibility… you can imagine bureaucrats trying to figure out if a file needs to be opened in Office or Office (new)

I mean, at least the gloves come off, who’s going to come after them for using the name? Microsoft? EU will just invalidate their patents. Done. Bye.

To be fair, Microsoft Office doesn't exist anymore as a separate brand:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-offi...

"Office is now Microsoft 365, the premier productivity suite with innovative productivity apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. Office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows are combined in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app—with a new icon, new look, and even more features."

You can count on Microsoft to mess up their marketing message in the craziest ways. Why stick with the best-known productivity software brand on the planet when you can call it "365 Copilot"?

For me, the charitable interpretation is that office is very close to a default term for the category of the software. Open Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, Only Office, Polaris Office.

One thing that may contribute to Europe's and the world's independence from Office is the notion that it's no longer a term distinctly associated with a Microsoft product.

I don't entirely disagree though because they could have attached some distinguishing prefix or suffix. Maybe that's what the .eu is.

Yeah, someone could confuse it with WordPerfect Office, Ability Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, or some other obscure software that uses the word "Office" in it's name.

> maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."

Surely you mean "Microsoft 365 Copilot"?

(I am not making this up. That is what it is called now.)

Realistically, though, I think pretty much _all_ office suites have been called [Something] Office, for about the last 30 years. The Google one ("Google Workplace", formerly "Google Apps") is the only exception I can think of, and I wouldn't necessarily take Google's lead in software branding (honestly, until I looked it up for this post, I thought it was still called Google Apps, and I use the damn thing every day).

In fairness, Office is as generic a term as one can come up with for such a software suite. On top of that, I wouldn't be surprised if that fell under Genericide like Lego or Google and, lest we forget, the Microsoft Office brand does not exist anymore, it is 365 and Copilot now...

That word is not as loaded as you might think it is anymore. At least not with the next generation of users.

With your average 18-24 year old swimming in Google Docs, Notion, Monday, Airtable and a dozen others..."Office" will belong to the EU in no time.

What I get out of that pitch is "use us because we're local to you, and possibly because you're required to, not because we're and good, or that we'll even try".

I mostly interact with smaller contributors to their field, and they tend to be unique and bold, because that's what is needed to be competitive. When they get their uniqueness and boldness out of just being who they are, it doesn't tend to foster the type of uniqueness and boldness needed to make a good product.

Focusing on the word "Office" feels like a bit of red herring considering it's frequently used in other Microsoft Office replacements like LibreOffice or OpenOffice.

Something like "EuropaOffice" would have followed the historical pattern so it's specifically the lack of an additional qualifier word that's perhaps questionable, not the word "Office."

But it does look like it's always called "Office.EU" in branding so maybe that's enough?

The product they're replacing is called Microsoft Copilot 365 :)

More seriously, Office is a great word for what the software package does, and it can't be trademarked. You can have Microsoft Office, Libre Office, and Europa Office.

I thought of it branded not Office generically but “Office.eu” but maybe I am wrong ?

Yes! Call it Bureau instead!

Launching now!

Join waitinglist. For a web app of Google docs.

The problem is that every attempt at European alternatives is taken at the government level (of some member country or of the EU) and immediately announced with great fanfare as the European comeback. The pathetic thing about it is that everybody who isn't totally clueless sees how utterly inadequate these attempts are, given the political involvement, the microscopic resources invested, the lack of incentives from competition, and the general hostility of European legislation and bureaucracy. And yet politicians keep making fools of themselves announcing this or that EU answer to American tech.

Care to expand further?

> Yes. Office EU provides a desktop sync client for Windows, macOS and Linux so files stay up to date across devices.

Regardless of the Nextcloud issue. It's probably just a web wrapper then.

Hopefully it is whitelabeled Nextcloud, and all the improvements can go back to the Nextcloud core. That would be a great use of my tax money.

This is probably not the target audience. Most people just need to write occasional letters and sign some files.

The vast majority of office use at my work is in the browsers because the files are stored in Sharepoint. It seems to work well enough for basic needs (no macros and fairly simple formulas in excel etc.)

I have a non-technical friend in finance who uses the Desktop versions of Excel for most of their work and they say it crashes nearly every day losing work.

Your sovereign wealth fund probably makes 3 billion dollars out of Microsoft yearly.

Do you have a reference for that number?

It's hard to get numbers on what countries pay to Microsoft. The Dutch parliament has repeatedly asked and has not gotten numbers even though there is a whole agency since 2014 (https://www.digitaleoverheid.nl/overzicht-van-alle-onderwerp...) specifically for giving Microsoft preferential treatment in procurement.

In 25 years I have never seen anyone use Microsoft Access in earnest. For the overwhelming majority of users I do not think this is an issue. The last time I used it was when studying for CLAiT Plus.

... Wait, people are still using MS Access?! I didn't even realise that there was still a current version.

> but for quick-and-dirty custom applications it's still the easiest platform out there.

So I'm a big LLM sceptic. Seriously, you can check. But if there is one thing that LLMs _are_ quite good at, it is the sort of quick and (very) dirty custom CRUD apps traditionally produced with Access.

Sure you can, you can also pirate Microsoft Office (the versions prior to the shittening). But companies don't want that, they just want to pay a few bucks per user per month to make it someone else's problem. Microsoft offers this service. Google offers this service. FOSS does not.

That's also why always-connected SaaS is winning - it makes more things the vendor's problem instead of the customer's problem. Provided that you maintain a good relationship with your vendor. A metal machining company doesn't want to hire an employee to manage a bespoke computer system, or even to replace computer parts or install Ethernet cabling in the building. They might do it, if it's the only good option, but they prefer it to just work without effort, even for more money.

Some European countries were trying to reduce their dependency on proprietary American software for decades now, with varying success. The recent events have likely accelerated this trajectory, but it is not new.

It was. The recent 18 months gave it more momentum of course, but it didn't just appear out of nowhere.

From: https://amsterdam.raadsinformatie.nl/document/16563456/1/Mee... (which is not the Hague, but Amsterdam)

>1.1 Introductie >Op 28 maart 2024 heeft de gemeenteraad van Amsterdam unaniem ingestemd met het (gewijzigde) initiatiefvoorstel Amsterdam Digitaal Onafhankelijk van raadslid IJmker

English:

>On March 28, 2024, the Amsterdam City Council unanimously approved the (amended) initiative proposal Amsterdam Digital Independent by Council Member IJmker

Oh, there's some reference to NextCloud - so is this just a white-labeled NextCloud? Or a straight-up AI generated rip-off / resell?

It says that it's based on Nextcloud, which is AGPL, so they better F:ing cough up the source code :-)

Yes, I searched for the same. No evidence this has anything to do with the European Union. More like a vibe-coded landing page with user signup form.

Edit: I am certain this is one or two people vibe coding then will pitch to VCs when the waitlist has 1000 people.

Listing major company logos in their banner: “The organizations listed here use similar technology (Nextcloud) as part of their operations. Their inclusion is for illustrative purposes only.”

Looks like a reasonable cookie banner to me: Deny (all), Custom selection and Accept all.

It even works perfectly with Consent-O-Matic extension.

this whole thing is a bait

That's a cloudflare anycast address; your traffic won't be routed through Texas unless you're in or near Texas. Cookiebot would appear to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usercentrics

I thought Proton did spy on their users.