<p>Microsoft Office doesn't want you to be alone. Productivity should be a shared experience, apparently, and now the vaunted Office suite wants to integrate your social circles into all your spreadsheets, Word docs, and presentation decks.</p><p>Imagine your co-workers, gathered virtually around your desk, showing you how to get more from Office, and helping you improve your work. That's the next-gen Office that Microsoft envisions, and it's a trick that none of Microsoft's competitorsGoogle and all the other freebie upstartshave yet to attempt.</p><p>Announced on Monday, Microsoft's description of the future of Office 365 shows an evolution from an individual user's application into a shared workspace. Yes, Office can help traditional customers, like college students, with traditional documents. But in this new, group-hug world view, the value of Office increases as the number of linked users increases. And that value can be summed up in two words: real-time context.</p><p>Office's evolution is, in many ways, running parallel to the evolution of most search providers: moving away from forcing you to search for information, instead delivering that information before you think to need it. We see that in Google Now, and in the leaked shots of Microsoft's Cortana digital assistant. Office will take that concept yet further.Work like a network</p><p><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2104021/group-hug-the-future-of-microsoft-office-is-shared-and-social.html">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-to-integrate-new-social-machine-learning-technologies-into-office-365-7000026941/">Microsoft to integrate new social, machine learning technologies into Office 365</a> (ZDNet)</p><p><a href="http://www.citeworld.com/cloud/23057/microsoft-office-devices-services">Microsoft Office&#039;s devices and services future becomes clearer</a> (CITEworld)</p><p><a href="http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/03/03/microsoft-makes-the-office-365-android-sdk-available-for-download/">Microsoft Makes The Office 365 Android SDK Available For Download</a> (Android Police)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dbdKajnzzmg0RIMvExLbQII6r4fFM&authuser=0&ned=us">179 additional articles.</a></p>