We have been looking forward to some updates from the Open Malaysia blog and there is finally a quick post, which is yet to be followed by others. The post sheds some more light on things that have been happening in the country. It seems to suggest that certain Microsoft partners have liaised to support and lobby in favour of OOXML in a country that has already made the decision to adopt ODF and has rejected OOXML with a "No" vote back in September.

With great "wins" like this, I always wondered why the Microsofties did not trumpet these case studies of wonderful "industry acceptance" of MSOOXML any louder? Its a gold-mine to announce that independent system vendors have wholly adopted their spanking new specification? This is further proof that ISO should ratify MSOOXML immediately with this worldwide support.

So is it "Well done, Microsoft Malaysia?" or is a timebomb just waiting to explode ala Sweden?

For those who do not remember or know, Microsoft got caught bribing its partners in Sweden in order to win support for OOXML. The vote from Sweden was consequently invalided. Here is a quick reminder in the form of an article from ComputerWorld.

Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard.

“In general, Microsoft uses its money in a variety of ways in order to promote OOXML.”There has been a lot more coverage of this incident. It's just the tip of the iceberg and it represents a widespread phenomenon, whose existence requires some 'smoking guns' leaks such as the above. In general, Microsoft uses its money in a variety of ways in order to promote OOXML. It's all about money. Whether it's illegal is a separate matter and it probably depends which part of the world you live in.

As time goes by, Microsoft will need to cope with the fact that office suites are becoming a commodity. Documents, spreadsheets, presentations and so forth will be more portable and tools for managing them will be based on support subscriptions or advertising as means for profit. Microsoft is still experimenting with the pay-as-you-go or pay-per-documented idea in particular parts of the world as it clings on to a dying business model. The following new article talks about some more barriers and disruptive trends.

The way we work is undergoing the biggest shift since Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Office launched in 1989--and it's poised to make editing documents on your desktop as quaint as correcting mistakes with Liquid Paper. Collaborative work applications, collectively known as "office 2.0," now let you work remotely with other people in whole new ways.

Here is another new article from CNN Money.

Factor in the marketing muscle of these two über-brands and suddenly it's easy to imagine a Gates-less Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) losing its monopoly in office computing.

It is worth emphasising that only two divisions at Microsoft account for the vast majority of its revenue. Discussing the failure of other divisions is beyond the scope of this Web site, but let it be clear that without the Office monopoly, Microsoft will be in serious trouble. The company is not as healthy as it wishes you to believe (we'll challenge criticism of this assertion shall that be required). ⬆