I would consider going back to Word if the browser-based version really ends up blowing me away in terms of design and speed. It better be good, really good, just out of principle. Not only because I'm angry that a company that made a great product for years (I grew up on Office) decided that, to suit its stock price, they'd wait as a long as possible to catch up with where I do the majority of my work -- on the browser, NOT on the desktop. It's tantamount to a huge slap in the face.
It also has to be cheap (I'd prefer free with ads, but one step at a time here). This notion that you can continue to have a high margin, high profit business on software like Word just doesn't work. These tools are commodities, and the urge for me to pay a ton of money for a piece of software because it has more features doesn't hold up unless I actually use said features. There's only so much innovation that can occur around a word processor and spreadsheets (and what innovation is left probably will center around integration with other Web applications).
The desktop version of Office will always have a place. Your accountants and financial analysts need Excel, for example. But I hope Microsoft 14 will be a different sort of sequel, where maybe the actors names don't change, but at least the ending doesn't leave you uttering the phrase, "ah, not again."
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