Users of the cloud-centric Chrome OS by Google can now edit native MS Word and MS Excel files. Google has not made an official announcement yet about the new functionality of the operating system but it has not gone unnoticed in the eyes of developers.
The first to take note of the new portion of the Chromium code is François Beaufort, an open-source evangelist and developer.
"Yes! All you need is to be on Dev Channel and enable the obscure 'chrome://flags/#enable-quick-office-editing flag'. Then, you're good to go. Obviously, this is the very beginning and it might be a little bit buggy," said Beaufort in a Google+ post.
At the moment only Word and Excel files can be edited. Users cannot use the system with Powerpoint presentations yet. Chrome OS users can expect the capabilities of the system to edit native MS Office files in the near future since the new functionality stems from Google's acquisition of the QuickOffice in June 2012.
According to an article on The Next Web, it is very likely that the Microsoft Office editing function will be heading to the Chrome browser before the end of 2013.
The editing function might head to the beta edition of the Chrome OS in a few weeks and to the stable version after a short while.
The MS Office editing capability was rolled out following the integration of the Chrome Office Viewer with the Chrome browser in April. The function of viewing was also first seen on the Chrome OS.
Can Microsoft consider the QuickOffice integration with Chrome as a threat? If the functionality of the QuickOffice gets at par, or at least close, with the Microsoft Office, the latter might have a problem given that consumers need to pay a premium to use it. First, QuickOffice needs to come close to what GoogleDocs can do now - with more editing capabilities, support for scripts, and support for graphs and tables - before aiming at the MS Office or the Office 365.
"Quickoffice has an established track record of enabling seamless interoperability with popular file formats, and we'll be working on bringing their powerful technology to our Apps product suite," promised Allan Warren, Google Engineering Director, in a blog post about Google's acquisition of QuickOffice.
