Microsoft reluctantly brought its lucrative Office software to the cloud with last year's release of , but has held back from offering all the collaboration functionality you get from either or the more expansive client versions of Microsoft's software.

RIVALS:

Office Web Apps had allowed multiple users to edit Excel and OneNote documents simultaneously, but co-authoring of Word and PowerPoint documents required the client . Now Microsoft's word processor allows browser-based co-authoring, functionality Google already offered with Docs.

Microsoft designed its own co-authoring to let users see when others edit documents while avoiding people over-writing each other's edits.

"Most people don't want others to see their thoughts and edits in a polished document until they're ready," the Microsoft Office Web Apps team writes in a . "At the same time, other contributors to the document want to review and digest changes being made before they react and respond instead of seeing others typing in the document where they're working.