The odds of governments or major corporations, M$'s biggest customers, switching from windows to linux are virtually nil. Institutions are heavily invested with Microsoft, linux Office won't be the tipping point for a switch to a whole new technology stack.
The Microsoft of today has nothing to lose from this. 20 years ago the situation was different. A must-have app like Office was all that was keeping people from switching to a wide variety of competing OSes. But it's 2013 and the battle has been won. For all the hate that people heap upon Microsoft, they dominate the most profitable sector of the personal computing market. Their strategic position doesn't depend on any one piece of software.
If anything, I think this move demonstrates how confident they are. In the past Office for linux would have been confounding, for both business and ideological reasons. This is the tech company version of dismantling the ICBMS. The OS cold war is over, and everyone can go back to business.
The Microsoft of today has nothing to lose from this. 20 years ago the situation was different. A must-have app like Office was all that was keeping people from switching to a wide variety of competing OSes. But it's 2013 and the battle has been won. For all the hate that people heap upon Microsoft, they dominate the most profitable sector of the personal computing market. Their strategic position doesn't depend on any one piece of software.
If anything, I think this move demonstrates how confident they are. In the past Office for linux would have been confounding, for both business and ideological reasons. This is the tech company version of dismantling the ICBMS. The OS cold war is over, and everyone can go back to business.