Quote:
Originally Posted by Arainach 
Google Apps is not an Office killer. It can't do a tenth of what Word and Excel can do, and a lot of businesses truly use all that functionality. Besides, it hasn't even tried to compete with the real reason MS Office is dominant - Exchange. There's truly no other product on earth that can touch its power or usability.
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Microsoft will always (Read: Most likely win for the foreseeable future until remote computing takes off) win in the business world because it started out with largest market share so nearly everything is compatible with it. I run a Mac but I also have windows for the purpose of Autodesk Software and Games (National Instruments Labview also I guess).
Chrome/Docs will succeed for the Basic Email/Facebook/Essay Typing/Letter Typing/Web browsing person who doesn't want to deal with viruses and doesn't need to do anything more.
Exchange will likely stay dominant because changing systems in large companies can be very expensive and it is a pain to teach your entire working population a new system. So I don't forsee Google taking over large businesses, small startup businesses it may have some potential if it can expand on the abilities of its Docs software, with their apps emulating a basic exchange (not as much as legit exchange) should be enough for Small couple person businesses I assume.
Edit: reading a prior post I sort of agree once we have more virtual computing where over the web processors do the crunching and stuff I think exchange will take less of a importance stance because instead of needing a server to keep tons of computers in sync and on track, each person can just log into the same computer and do what they need. (Or set of load balanced mirrored computers)
In short Chrome OS I dont think will instantly kill Microsoft in the Pro world, it would take a lot of time to do that (we would probably need to do virtual computing where you connect to a super computer that does the crunching before that) but in smaller compters (especially netbooks) where people wish to have a simple easy to set up and intuitive almost mac like system where they don't have to worry about viruses without the apple tax and having the ability to use existing components.