Skip to main content

Google and Microsoft partner to ensure Office Mobile experience on Chromebooks

Microsoft has made a concerted effort over the last couple of years to provide solid cross-platform support for all of its applications and services. Indeed, supporting iOS and Android along with their Windows 10 ecosystem is a cornerstone of its “cloud-first, mobile-first” productivity solutions strategy.

Chromebooks have always been a strange outlier. While users of Google’s Chrome OS-based notebooks have always been able to access Microsoft’s Office Online products, there has never been a dedicated app like the Office Mobile suite that has long been available for iOS, Android, and Windows 10. That is about to change, albeit in a roundabout way, as 9to5Google reports.

Recommended Videos

Relatively recently, Google added the ability for Chrome OS to run Android apps and access to the Google Play Store. The move dramatically increased the value of a Chromebook, providing the minimal notebooks with sudden access to hundreds of thousands of Android apps. Microsoft’s Office Mobile apps for Android are among those that should now be available to Chromebook users.

However, some users ran into issues downloading Office Mobile on their Chromebooks earlier in the week, leading to some speculation that Microsoft was deliberately blocking the apps. As it turns out, it is the opposite, as Microsoft has since stated, “Our strategy has not changed. Office for Android is supported on Chrome OS devices via the Google Play Store. While Google Play on Chrome OS is in beta, we are partnering with Google to deliver the best experience for Chromebook users and plan to make the apps available on all compatible devices by general availability.”

It is important to note the kind of Chromebook an Office Mobile app, be it Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote, runs on is an important consideration. While Microsoft lets users edit Office documents for free using the apps on devices with screens smaller than 10.1 inches, larger devices must have an active Office 365 subscription to edit documents.

Clearly, Microsoft recognizes the growing influence of Chromebooks, which continue to sell at volumes that make them a small but growing portion of the potential market for Microsoft’s productivity solutions. And so it should come as no surprise that Microsoft is working closely with Google to ensure that when Chromebook users are editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and taking notes, that they are using Office Mobile.

Mark Coppock
Mark Coppock is a Freelance Writer at Digital Trends covering primarily laptop and other computing technologies. He has…
How much is Microsoft Office?

The Microsoft Office app on PC.

Microsoft Office, or Microsoft 365 as it's known today, is the full suite of Microsoft work-related applications. It includes iconic programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, as well as more modern additions like Teams and OneDrive. You can use a number of these for free in their web versions, or you can pay a monthly subscription to use their downloaded, local versions.

There is no single price for Microsoft 365, as it's only available on the software as a service (SAAS) model, but the monthly cost differs depending on whether you're a home user or business user, and whether you're looking to subscribe for just yourself, or an entire team.

Read more
Microsoft Word vs. Google Docs
A person using a laptop that displays various Microsoft Office apps.

For the last few decades, Microsoft Word has been the de facto standard for word processors across the working world. That's finally starting to shift, and it looks like one of Google's productivity apps is the heir apparent. The company's Google Docs solution (or to be specific, the integrated word processor) is cross-platform and interoperable, automatically syncs, is easily shareable, and perhaps best of all, is free.

However, using Google Docs proves it still has a long way to go before it can match all of Word's features -- Microsoft has been developing its word processor for over 30 years, after all, and millions still use Microsoft Word. Will Google Docs' low barrier to entry and cross-platform functionality win out? Let's break down each word processor in terms of features and capabilities to help you determine which is best for your needs.
How does each word processing program compare?
To put it lightly, Microsoft Word has an incredible advantage over Google Docs in terms of raw technical capability. From relatively humble beginnings in the 1980s, Microsoft has added new tools and options in each successive version. Most of the essential editing tools are available in Google Docs, but users who are used to Word will find it limited.

Read more
I tried Microsoft Office on my Quest 3 and came away disappointed
Most features, like adjusting a document's layout in Word, work fine on a Quest 3.

For documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, Office is the go-to suite of apps many rely on. Trying to work on a small laptop screen can be restrictive, so Microsoft teamed up with Meta to bring owners of the excellent new Quest 3 a potential solution to work in VR.

I previously attempted to get real work done using my Quest Pro for a week and, more recently, with the faster Quest 3 as a laptop replacement. In each case, there were problems that were best solved by wirelessly connecting my VR headset to a computer, making it more of a monitor replacement.

Read more