“Wow, wow, wow — Fake Office! That is indeed a badge of honor for us. We just have a polite suggestion to Microsoft: to be perfectly consistent, Microsoft should also label their Bing ‘Fake Search’ — fair is fair, right? For the record, we actually think Bing brings a welcome dose of competition and we certainly don’t think Bing is by any means fake, but with Microsoft marketing terming the entire competitive landscape to their number 1 cash cow ‘fake’, we have to wonder if that would apply to their own effort at competing with the other dominant vendor.”

And more:

“Seriously, the whole ‘fake office’ designation illustrates the main problem Microsoft faces. In their world view, with their quaint ‘Release to Manufacturing’ rituals, the fact that a Zoho user has no CD or DVD to buy, no bloatware to download, nothing to install, simply just visit a web site, log-in (using Google or Yahoo accounts, if they must), and they are on their way to Work Online, must all feel a bit, well, fake. But take it from us Microsoft: there is nothing fake about browser-based applications, no matter how you wish to keep the world on your ‘manufacturing’ world-view of software, with your proprietary lock-ins and your 90 percent operating margins.”

In light of Markezich’s comments, Sembu finished by ‘thanking’ Microsoft for the Fake Office name and announced a new site FakeOffice.org site to help make Zoho’s case.