The European Commission will be investigating Microsoft’s new plan that will allow its Office software to edit and save files in a rival format. The EU is skeptical on whether or not the ability for Microsoft to support Open Document Formats in Office will give consumers a fair choice.
“The Commission will investigate whether the announced support of Open Document Format in Office leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice,” the commission said in a statement reported by Dow Jones.
A product manager for Microsoft stated in an interview that the company is working on a way to discuss their options and plans with the Commission. “We have ongoing dialogue with the EC, so we will absolutely have a discussion with them about these steps and get whatever feedback they may have on it,” said Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft.
Office 2007 will be supporting ODF as a native file format along with Microsoft’s Office Open XML file format starting in the beginning of 2009. This will customers that choice of which default format they will use between those two choices.
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