Study: OpenOffice five times more popular than Google Docs

Confirming recent comments by Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer, an independent study released Friday found OpenOffice.org's free office suite to be five times more popular among adult U.S. internet users than Google Docs.

Microsoft Office remains dominant, with 51% of American internet users over age 18 using it, according to a 6-month study conducted by market researcher ClickStream Technologies.

OpenOffice.org was used by 5% of people, versus Google Docs' 1%, according to the survey of 2,400 users on their home PCs conducted between May and November of this year. OpenOffice.org was also found to be used more often, 8.7 days, versus 1.5 days; and longer, an average of 9.3 minutes, versus 3.4 minutes for Google Docs, according to ClickStream's panel, which was two-thirds comprised of women.

During a keynote speech at a Gartner Inc. conference last month, Ballmer said: "We have better competition today than Google Docs and Spreadsheets. We get more competition from OpenOffice and StarOffice, frankly."

Microsoft is poised to cement that domination with its upcoming Office Web, and online versions of its Exchange and SharePoint products , to be announced on Monday.

The latest version, OpenOffice.org 3.0, had a strong first week, with more than 3 million downloads in that time. After one month, OpenOffice.org 3.0 had been downloaded 10 million times, the group said.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine