Office 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 betas are both now available to the public.
The news came first today in an article by Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet who, over the years, has very much been in the loop of breaking Microsoft news.
Microsoft appears to be continuing a tradition started with Windows 7 of releasing betas in the general public for evaluation and feedback (and, of course, to help create a buzz). Prior to Windows 7, most if not all Microsoft test products were evaluated by a smaller group of Microsoft beta testers.
The confirmation process (which I just went through) appears different than in the past, routing you to your exisiting Microsoft profile to determine which product version is right for you and then confirming your email.
There seems to be no shortage of servers for this event and my 684 MB download of Micorsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 is zipping along as I write this blog post.
With Google holding a launch event tomorrow for the much anticipated Chrome OS, Microsoft also got the jump on them by one day with this release.
Will Office 2010 be a HUGE improvement over previous versions?
I'll be sure and share some of those opinions in the shared reader feed (at the right) over the next week or two .... and hopefully have some time to do a review right here as well.
One thing is becoming clear. Microsoft and Google are looking right at each others territory.
Yes ... the war for your desktop (AND your Internet pageviews) is on.