Microsoft is planning an online Office service, called Office Live , which could — and probably will — replace the software version of MS Office in the next few years. The big kicker is that the company might be planning an ad-supported version of the service, based on MS Works, which will enable those so inclined to do most of their work in the browser or in a very thin client on the desktop. This could come free with every Windows installation, making it a strong competitor to Google’s Docs suite.

Presumably this dumbed-down Office would focus on very simple tasks and not have most of the features found in most other expensive office suites like Zoho.com, OpenOffice, emacs, and vim.