Microsoft has had its own formats since the inception of the productivity suite concept. In the beginning, everyone else had theirs and cross-suite compatibility was impossible or a third-party issue. Then Office stomped the competition into the ground in terms of market share, and anyone competing in the space made sure to be compatible with Office file formats both coming and going. Then Acrobat messed everything up.

Now we've got XML. So Office 12 will have a whole slew of new file format options. First, there's its own file formats. It'll support the old .doc, .xls, and all the rest. In addition, it'll support a new XML and Zip-based file format that will add a few schema and developer-oriented documents to the tail of any existing document, allowing those docs to be more easily parsed into some third-party application, Web service, or (theoretically) third-party productivity suite such as OpenOffice.

But wait, there's more.

Bolstered by the success of Acrobat, Microsoft decides to … reinvent the wheel. It creates its own PDF-like file format, called XPS (XML Paper Specification, formerly code-named Metro after my second least-favorite Eddie Murphy cop movie). This is an electronic paper concept, very similar to Acrobat, but with (supposedly) more granular permissions controls, and of course, a Microsoft-only bent. Which begs the question: What's the point?

To make it worse, Microsoft has also announced it'll support the actual Acrobat in Office 12; undoubtedly because Save to PDF is one of the favorite user features of OpenOffice. Press a button, save into PDF. No muss, no fuss, no added licensing costs.