Google has attacked Microsoft’s conduct during the push to get its OOXML adopted as an ISO standard.
The search company claims on its Code Blog that “technical standards should be arrived at transparently, openly, and based on technical merit.” However, the company notes that “many irregularities have been reported in the voting process,” not least Microsoft’s attempt to persuade Swedish partners to vote for the OOXML standard.
Microsoft insists its “corporate policy expressly forbids financial support” for companies involved with voting bodies and that it “realised the potential problem and immediately moved to correct it with these companies.”
Google also casts doubt over the standard’s openness, claiming that “undocumented features of OOXML prevents its implementation by other vendors” and that “dependencies on other Microsoft proprietary formats and their technical defects makes it difficult to fully implement.”
The search king is particularly vexed that the standard remains incompatible with the already-established ODF. “[ODF] already offers a high degree of interoperability, wide support, and offers the level playing field the world needs,” the blog claims.
“Google is a supporter of ODF and has successfully integrated this open format into Google Docs and Spreadsheets. ODF also enjoys implementation in over 12 other products.”
In fact, the blog goes as far as urging people to disregard OOXML. “Google supports one open document format and calls on industry participants to collaboratively work on ODF.”
“With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass on to future generations.”
Disclaimer: Some pages on this site may include an affiliate link. This does not effect our editorial in any way.
