Last month after Google announced it has added Google Presentations to its Google Docs online suite and IBM released its Lotus Symphony as free download, everybody was wondering how Microsoft will respond to those threats to its dominance in office suites market.

Especially since few days ago IBM announced that its free office suite Lotus Symphony has seen more than 100,000 downloads in the first week of availability, while the official site has received more than one million visitors during that interval.

But today, the Redmond software giant announced new web services that let people store and access their documents online and share them with others.

And that’s all. Don’t’ get to excited because you won’t get a Web version of Excel, Word or let’s say PowerPoint. Unlike Google Docs, where everything you need there in Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace In order to create your online files, you will need to own Office 2007 suite. In fact, the service is just, as Microsoft said, the online companion to Microsoft Office

Still users who don't have a desktop version of Office software can still view and comment on the document in a browser, Microsoft said.

Microsoft's Office Live Workspace is currently in a beta phase and is open for any user to register. It allows users to save more than 1,000 Office documents to one place online and access them through the Web, and to share the documents with others in a password- protected, invitation-only online workspace.

Microsoft Office 2007, which was launched earlier this year, is a radically improved product. For example Office 2007 comes with a new design that more prominently shows the commands a user is likely to need.

In fact, along with Windows, the Office suite is one the main sources of revenues for the Redmond company.

Earlier this year Microsoft announced the financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter and said that the sales in the client division, which is dominated by Windows Vista and Office 2007, rose 14 per cent to 3.81 billion dollars, compared to 3.35 billion dollars a year ago.