[the_trapper]

I find all of the negativity related to this very strange. Microsoft Word on Android is incredible (and the other MS Office apps for that matter). The ability to not only view, but even edit documents on my phone has come in handy many times. Google Docs is good for what it is, but it is not 100% compatible, and round tripping documents that contain complex formatting is risky.

Overall Microsoft's Android apps are of very high quality. I'm pretty certain that these 1 billion installs are not just bundling deals. The vast majority of businesses and governments rely upon Microsoft Office, so is it really that surprising that employees of these organizations would install these apps on their mobile devices?

[partiallypro]

There is still a lot of Microsoft hate, or people in denial that Microsoft makes some amazing products. People like to think the world has moved on its something. Don't even mention Azure market share, some people hear will go full blown truther.

[SECProto]

The app may be great. I have no opinion on that. But the number (1 billion installed!) is rather meaningless, if many manufacturers are installing it by default. Active monthly users would be a more meaningful statistic (and would allow comparison with total android user base [1]).

All that said, I find it entertaining that the ability to do word processing on mobile is seen as "incredible". I would think word processing is a simple task that demonstrates a device to be a real general purpose computer - I've done word processing on a computer since I was a child.

[1] about 2.5 billion devices active monthly. https://twitter.com/Android/status/1125822326183014401

[the_trapper]

I'm not saying that just doing word processing on my phone is incredible. Microsoft Word is one of the most powerful word processors and I just find it incredible how many features from the traditional desktop version are supported on a mobile device.

[bsaul]

after having tried to reverse engineer some proprietary document format i’m becoming really sensitive to companies walling their market by doing complex and poorly documented file format. I feel like reaching a certain market share there should be a regulation forcing companies to at least document the format.

How are .docx document doing those days ? Is it possible to create a docx reader that would display word document correctly? ( at least the basic features, excluding complex things involving spreadsheet embedding for example)