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sigma writes:

Infoworld: Google's surprise: ODF support launches ahead of schedule

As promised in London's ODF Plugfest early this year, Google announced today that it’s now officially supporting ODF files in Google Drive allowing users to import all three major ODF file formats. That includes .odt files for documents, .ods for spreadsheets, and .odp for presentations, the file types used by applications like Open Office and others supporting the open platform.

Google, like Microsoft, has not made it easy to use ODF as part of a workflow, with change tracking information, annotations, and other metadata left off the import and export process. For both companies, ODF has been seen as a migration format rather than as a working format, however Google faces significant pressure securing government business in many countries around the world, and especially the U.K. now that ODF is a requirement in so many procurement policies.

Official interest in ODF around the world is growing, and since Google wants to sell Drive and Chromebooks into government-controlled markets, ODF is becoming a gating factor.