It says that it's based on Nextcloud, which is AGPL, so they better F:ing cough up the source code :-)

> Yes. Office EU provides a desktop sync client for Windows, macOS and Linux so files stay up to date across devices.

Regardless of the Nextcloud issue. It's probably just a web wrapper then.

Yes, I searched for the same. No evidence this has anything to do with the European Union. More like a vibe-coded landing page with user signup form.

Edit: I am certain this is one or two people vibe coding then will pitch to VCs when the waitlist has 1000 people.

Listing major company logos in their banner: “The organizations listed here use similar technology (Nextcloud) as part of their operations. Their inclusion is for illustrative purposes only.”

Oh, there's some reference to NextCloud - so is this just a white-labeled NextCloud? Or a straight-up AI generated rip-off / resell?

Hopefully it is whitelabeled Nextcloud, and all the improvements can go back to the Nextcloud core. That would be a great use of my tax money.

Sure you can, you can also pirate Microsoft Office (the versions prior to the shittening). But companies don't want that, they just want to pay a few bucks per user per month to make it someone else's problem. Microsoft offers this service. Google offers this service. FOSS does not.

That's also why always-connected SaaS is winning - it makes more things the vendor's problem instead of the customer's problem. Provided that you maintain a good relationship with your vendor. A metal machining company doesn't want to hire an employee to manage a bespoke computer system, or even to replace computer parts or install Ethernet cabling in the building. They might do it, if it's the only good option, but they prefer it to just work without effort, even for more money.

This is probably not the target audience. Most people just need to write occasional letters and sign some files.

The vast majority of office use at my work is in the browsers because the files are stored in Sharepoint. It seems to work well enough for basic needs (no macros and fairly simple formulas in excel etc.)

I have a non-technical friend in finance who uses the Desktop versions of Excel for most of their work and they say it crashes nearly every day losing work.

LibreOffice came from OpenOffice which was StarOffice which was developed in Germany.

That's a cloudflare anycast address; your traffic won't be routed through Texas unless you're in or near Texas. Cookiebot would appear to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usercentrics

They list a bunch of companies under the heading "All these companies work with the same technology" on their landing page. I think it's quite scummy, and very non-impressive when you see it.

Yeah, someone could confuse it with WordPerfect Office, Ability Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, or some other obscure software that uses the word "Office" in it's name.

In 25 years I have never seen anyone use Microsoft Access in earnest. For the overwhelming majority of users I do not think this is an issue. The last time I used it was when studying for CLAiT Plus.

... Wait, people are still using MS Access?! I didn't even realise that there was still a current version.

> but for quick-and-dirty custom applications it's still the easiest platform out there.

So I'm a big LLM sceptic. Seriously, you can check. But if there is one thing that LLMs _are_ quite good at, it is the sort of quick and (very) dirty custom CRUD apps traditionally produced with Access.

It was. The recent 18 months gave it more momentum of course, but it didn't just appear out of nowhere.

From: https://amsterdam.raadsinformatie.nl/document/16563456/1/Mee... (which is not the Hague, but Amsterdam)

>1.1 Introductie >Op 28 maart 2024 heeft de gemeenteraad van Amsterdam unaniem ingestemd met het (gewijzigde) initiatiefvoorstel Amsterdam Digitaal Onafhankelijk van raadslid IJmker

English:

>On March 28, 2024, the Amsterdam City Council unanimously approved the (amended) initiative proposal Amsterdam Digital Independent by Council Member IJmker

Launching now!

Join waitinglist. For a web app of Google docs.

Some European countries were trying to reduce their dependency on proprietary American software for decades now, with varying success. The recent events have likely accelerated this trajectory, but it is not new.

I thought Proton did spy on their users.

I need to learn this skill of producing nothing and pretending I have. It seems to be very rewarding, financially speaking.

For me, the charitable interpretation is that office is very close to a default term for the category of the software. Open Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, Only Office, Polaris Office.

One thing that may contribute to Europe's and the world's independence from Office is the notion that it's no longer a term distinctly associated with a Microsoft product.

I don't entirely disagree though because they could have attached some distinguishing prefix or suffix. Maybe that's what the .eu is.

Looks like a reasonable cookie banner to me: Deny (all), Custom selection and Accept all.

It even works perfectly with Consent-O-Matic extension.

I like how some of the logos are inexplicably upside down:

https://office.eu/images/social-proof/tu-berlin.svg https://office.eu/images/social-proof/itzbund.svg

> maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."

Surely you mean "Microsoft 365 Copilot"?

(I am not making this up. That is what it is called now.)

Realistically, though, I think pretty much _all_ office suites have been called [Something] Office, for about the last 30 years. The Google one ("Google Workplace", formerly "Google Apps") is the only exception I can think of, and I wouldn't necessarily take Google's lead in software branding (honestly, until I looked it up for this post, I thought it was still called Google Apps, and I use the damn thing every day).

Focusing on the word "Office" feels like a bit of red herring considering it's frequently used in other Microsoft Office replacements like LibreOffice or OpenOffice.

Something like "EuropaOffice" would have followed the historical pattern so it's specifically the lack of an additional qualifier word that's perhaps questionable, not the word "Office."

But it does look like it's always called "Office.EU" in branding so maybe that's enough?

The product they're replacing is called Microsoft Copilot 365 :)

More seriously, Office is a great word for what the software package does, and it can't be trademarked. You can have Microsoft Office, Libre Office, and Europa Office.

What I get out of that pitch is "use us because we're local to you, and possibly because you're required to, not because we're and good, or that we'll even try".

I mostly interact with smaller contributors to their field, and they tend to be unique and bold, because that's what is needed to be competitive. When they get their uniqueness and boldness out of just being who they are, it doesn't tend to foster the type of uniqueness and boldness needed to make a good product.

Do you have a reference for that number?

It's hard to get numbers on what countries pay to Microsoft. The Dutch parliament has repeatedly asked and has not gotten numbers even though there is a whole agency since 2014 (https://www.digitaleoverheid.nl/overzicht-van-alle-onderwerp...) specifically for giving Microsoft preferential treatment in procurement.

That word is not as loaded as you might think it is anymore. At least not with the next generation of users.

With your average 18-24 year old swimming in Google Docs, Notion, Monday, Airtable and a dozen others..."Office" will belong to the EU in no time.

In fairness, Office is as generic a term as one can come up with for such a software suite. On top of that, I wouldn't be surprised if that fell under Genericide like Lego or Google and, lest we forget, the Microsoft Office brand does not exist anymore, it is 365 and Copilot now...

Care to expand further?

The problem is that every attempt at European alternatives is taken at the government level (of some member country or of the EU) and immediately announced with great fanfare as the European comeback. The pathetic thing about it is that everybody who isn't totally clueless sees how utterly inadequate these attempts are, given the political involvement, the microscopic resources invested, the lack of incentives from competition, and the general hostility of European legislation and bureaucracy. And yet politicians keep making fools of themselves announcing this or that EU answer to American tech.

this whole thing is a bait

You say "tax money", but this project isn't a government project or using public money at all. As for contributing back to Nextcloud: there is a long list of Nextcloud partners [1] that contractually obligated themselves to contribute back to Nextcloud for every user they onboard. The company in this article has not.

[1] https://nextcloud.com/partners/

>"Office EU is a European productivity suite for files, email, calendars, documents and calls, built on Nextcloud Hub. It brings Files, Talk, Groupware and Office together in one platform."

https://office.eu/faq

Of which, Files, Talk, Office and Groupware are all just NextCloud services where they've swapped "Nextcloud" for "EU" in the name.

>"Office.EU is a service offered and operated by EUfforic Europe BV, registered with the Dutch chamber of commerce under registration number 98746243 and having its address at Dr. Kuyperstraat 10-A at (2514 BB) The Hague, the Netherlands."

I wouldn't personally trust a company that appears to be claiming another company's services as some revolutionary new thing, when it's just reselling them. And it was registered in November 2025 with no other information available - why would anyone gamble all their company data on a company that has appeared as quickly as it might disappear? Who are the owners/founders even?

Anyway, this was a waste of time.

It also possibly sets a false expectation of perfect compatibility… you can imagine bureaucrats trying to figure out if a file needs to be opened in Office or Office (new)

To be fair, Microsoft Office doesn't exist anymore as a separate brand:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-offi...

"Office is now Microsoft 365, the premier productivity suite with innovative productivity apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. Office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows are combined in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app—with a new icon, new look, and even more features."

You can count on Microsoft to mess up their marketing message in the craziest ways. Why stick with the best-known productivity software brand on the planet when you can call it "365 Copilot"?

Your sovereign wealth fund probably makes 3 billion dollars out of Microsoft yearly.

I agree. We don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Excel is pretty stable.. I guess it could be those specific sheets doing something odd.

Really, just lack shame and sell something you do not have and bet that you can get it before anyone really presses too hard. It's an incredible thing to see.

You need to know the right people in Brussels/Washington, to milk and scam the taxpayer in your favor.

In general getting EU grants is very lucrative. It takes some relationships and writing skill but in the end you never have to deliver any results (beyond maybe a report that no one ever reads)

Should have gotten an MBA instead of a BS.

I think they could've worked a little harder to at least find a noun you could futz with so it has some commonality between european languages. "Office" is probably well known, but it doesn't "feel" very european to use a noun that's different from most other EU languages translation. Could be "Productiv" or something. It feels like the federal government here in Canada has a team of language nerds ready to smash together a clever french-english name with two superimposed meanings when needed. ("O-Train", Ottawa Train, Au Train. "Via Rail". "Service Canada". "ArriveCAN". etc)

You can't tell me there isn't a few turbo-nerds somewhere in the entire continent of europe that will find the intersection of 6-7 languages to name an EU groupware suite.

It's a perfectly not reasonable cookie banner. If you click on Details, you can see that they're not using marketing, statistics, or any other kind of cookies apart from the technically necessary. Which is great, but also means that they don't even need a banner. It could just go away.

Nextcloud does not provide hosting, only 3rd level support. So any commercial hosting of Nextcloud will be done by other companies. There are many companies to choose from.

https://nextcloud.com/partners/

Personally, I would only choose companies that are listed as a partner because then I can see what level of support they buy from Nextcloud.

Touche

Oh what! Wow, that' misleading, although I guess it doesn't explicitly say "public" or "government" everywhere. Hm.

The fund owns about 1.26% of Microsoft (data seems to be for 2025), which according to Gemini is about $37.5b in today's value. Stock value of Microsoft changed about 5.23% over the last year, which comes down to about $1.96b, so you're not far off...

https://www.nbim.no/no/investeringene/investeringsoversikt/#...

I think it's a factor of things, but Excel isn't as stable as it once was. My friends spreadsheets include:

- Row count ~100k - Column count ~1k - The usual vlookup, etc. formulae. - Oracle extensions that sync tables to databases in the cloud.

I doubt this will stop the lawsuit. Also Microsoft still absolutely sells Office 365 tiers separately from Microsoft 365 tiers. Their marketing is terrible and confusing but Offie definitely still exits as a brand, and you can bet your bottom dollar the lawyers are going to be having a great day on Monday.

Considering that for the average office worker I know switching from outlook to outlook (new) is a major hurdle within the same ecosystem, I can only imagine what they were thinking coming up with a name.

Every time SharePoint/Teams decides to open a document in the browser, I cry a little. Misalignments in Word, broken basic keyboard movements in Excel, terrible performance across the board.

> I doubt this will stop the lawsuit.

I mean, I think that ship has probably sailed. Borland Office showed up at about the same time as Microsoft Office, in the late 80s. Then StarOffice, Corel Office, Wordperfect Office, throughout the 90s... If Microsoft had a defensible trademark there, then this would hardly be the first target. And Microsoft barely uses the "Office" brand _itself_, these days, and hasn't for years.

(There is still a product called Microsoft Office, but the thing that most users would think of as MS Office is now, bafflingly, branded "Microsoft 365 Copilot".)

Microsoft does not have a trademark for "Office", which is clearly a type of product and can't be used as a program name (just like you can't name your oatmeal "Oatmeal" and expect trademark protection).

Microsoft does have a figurative trademark for "Office" with the rectangular icon: https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/01141355... - office.eu's logo does not bear any resemblance.

The only way this would be infringing is if office.eu usage could be confused with Microsoft other's trademarks - like Microsoft Office - but I don't see that.

So no, office.eu will have a calm Monday on that front, just like hundreds of other companies offering products with "Office" in their name.

(I'm not a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer before deciding to take on a trillion dollar company).

Outlook New somehow to this day, lacks good feature of Outlook

That is not even broaching the sacred domain-specific excel macros which will 100% break when you try and run in this program.

I can't wait to launch my Office alternative in Cameroon, office.cm. I do suspect using such a generic TLD swap of Office's well-known domain for a knockoff is particularly perilous compared to others mentioned. Bear in mind the possibility for consumer confusion is a top criteria.

That is a very fair point, there are quite a few businesses and government agencies where I live, which are very deeply entrenched in very complex, decade spanning VBA based workflows that need absolute and fully compatibility before a switch away from "MS 365 Copilot" could even be considered and the name may give false expectations.

Now, I really, very much dislike it that often discussions on sites like this one can be utterly derailed by someone bringing up an utterly unrelated overhyped topic, so feel free to dismiss this, but I could honestly see LLMs providing a potential path to smoothing out such issues. Some model have gotten rather robust when it comes to making targeted changes to pre-existing Excel files dating back to before I was using a computer, including handling very specific modifications to ancient macros across multiple sheets. Perhaps, this could be leveraged to some extent, though being honest and trying not to overhype, I suspect that similar to those planning to use agentic coding to rewrite decades old, tested, crucially important COBOL code in a more modern language, there are likely many edge cases that will be hard to properly cover and if such a solution isn't both absolutely reliable and seamless to the users, large scale adoption by such entities will likely be impossible in the short term.