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Google Launches Powerpoint Competition, Web Ads for Mobile Devices

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Sep 18, 2007 09:08 AM
from the never-a-dull-moment-in-mountain-view dept.
Businesses Google The Internet IT
fullstop writes "Google has finally launched their online presentation tool to complete its office offerings at Google Docs." Relatedly several users have also mentioned that Google plans to start selling ads for cell phone-targeted websites. "The company said that its new product, AdSense for Mobile, would establish a cellphone advertising network in which Google would match ads with the content of mobile Web pages, much as it does online. Other Internet giants, including Yahoo and AOLTime Warner, as well as some start-ups, have also created advertising networks tailored for mobile phones."
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Submission: Google Presentation launched! by fullstop (757724)
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  • "wed sites"?? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Come on editors! It's even underlined for you as a hyperlink!

    Either that or the mail-order brides business is booming far more than we originally expected! ;)

  • Not shabby (Score:5, Informative)

    by TrippTDF (513419) <hiland@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Tuesday September 18 2007, @09:12AM (#20651549)
    The Presentation tool isn't bad- simple interface, but there's a limited number of themes, and it looks like no way to create your own, other than uploading an existing PowerPoint deck. It also doesn't support transitions. However, the integrated sharing ability is what really make this a winner. If anyone is shaking in their boots, it should be WebEx, as this makes it much easier to view a deck than using their software.

    Still, it seems that the adoption of Google's tools is pretty slow. Most people I talk to are still skeptical of them.

    • Re:Not shabby (Score:4, Insightful)

      by darthflo (1095225) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @09:31AM (#20651929)

      Most people I talk to are still skeptical of them.
      I agree that it is a rather nice product, however I still belong to the skepticists for some reasons:
      • Privacy (i.e. Google sees everything I do)
      • Not liking the idea of losing all my docs if Google decides to be bankrupt some day (I know I can store all my docs locally, but that'd defeat most of GDocs advantages
      • Features (i.e. GDocs "is teh sux" when feature-compared to OOo or even MSO 2007)
      • Web apps may be nice, but they're made much more than they are. Remember moving away from dumb terminals not too long ago?
      • Availability (Thanks to WWAN and good mobile networks, I am seldomly disconnected, but I'd like to be able to have my stuff handy when abroad or in a cave (powering my notebook with a miniature nuclear reactor (the cave's deep enough not to let any GSM/802.11/CDMA radio in or Pu radiation out, no threat to National Security® there)))
      • Dumb terminals are a better idea than fat clients for most corporate employees who use the same software day in day out.
    • "Most people I talk to are still skeptical of them."

      Offline work? Yeah, you can make it with the Google app, then download it and work on it offline...but then, why bother to use the Google app? This is the problem with web-apps: you are relying on an internet connection, and we just don't have that kind of infrastructure here in America. Then there is the problem of putting your data in someone else's hands. And the lack of an actual AJAX standard. And the fact that Google apps don't support my br

      • Re:Offline work? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MobileTatsu-NJG (946591) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @10:47AM (#20653459)
        "Offline work? Yeah, you can make it with the Google app, then download it and work on it offline...but then, why bother to use the Google app?"

        This may not apply to you, but I like it because I work from several different computers throughout the day. Google Docs is a nice centralized place to work on documents. I can start something at home, go to work, work on it some more, go back home, do even more, etc. I don't have to tote the docs around on a thumb-drive or something. It's valuable to me, so much so that I don't even bother installing Office anymore. Of course, your mileage may vary.
        • Well, everyone's situation is different. If the locations you are working at do not have an office suite install, then I can see a need for Google Docs. In my situation, I have a laptop, and I also have several servers in various locations (one little personal one that I run for myself) that I can use to store some files and pick them up from another location. As you noted, everyone's situation is different.

              • Re:Offline work? (Score:4, Informative)

                by MobileTatsu-NJG (946591) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @03:31PM (#20659297)
                Alrighty. 'll give yout he pros and cons version:

                Pros:

                - Typically I work across 3 different computers. Work, Home desktop, Home laptop. Also, from time to time, I'm asked to use other machines at work. GDocs is central and easy to get to. For this reason, I often use it for scratch stuff. For example: I recently purchased a computer. I created a spreadsheet at home with all the components + prices I wanted. Then, at work, one of my coworkers told me about a brand of product I'd probably like better. I spent a few minutes on my lunch break looking into it, agreed with him, and modified that spreadsheet. (It wouldn't have occured to me to upload that spreadsheet from home to my server since I didn't expect to want to modify it from work.)

                - I can 'publish' documents, which means they basically go up on the web as HTML and people can view them. I get a kick out of this because it's like quickly putting up a web page. I can write out a doc, attach pics, etc, and just hit 'Publish', then I get a link I can send people.

                - I've never personally used this, but GDocs supports collaboration. Other people can edit the documents if you enable this. You can also restrict who can look at it, and there's even mention of using RSS propogation for it. I haven't personally used that but I imagine there's some interesting uses for this.

                - GDocs automatically saves every few seconds. That makes it hard to lose a lot of data if your net connection suddenly dies. It also shows you the changes/revisions you've made over the life of the document. As a matter of fact, I just checked, and all those revisions from stuff I've written last Xmas are there. (I think Word has a similar feature, but I'm not familiar with it.)

                - You can Google Search through your docs. I've never really used that, but that feature is absolutely killer with email.

                - If you're a fan of how GMail organizes its emails, you're in for a treat. In my opinion, it's a lot more intuitive than storing files in a folder structure. (Without losing the benefits of the file structure.) Actually, I think this is what Microsoft had in mind when they were talking about the new file system for Vista that they never got around to finishing.


                Cons:

                - Yeah... if the net breaks, GDocs is useless. I've bumped into that a couple of times.

                - This shouldn't be a 'con' so much as just a little warning to you. I don't do a lot of formal docs with GDocs. I don't know how effective its page layout tools are. If you need to do something that's print sensitive, I cannot guarantee you that it'd satisfactorally replace Office.

                - Excel's interface is definitely more repsonsive than GDoc's Spreadsheets. For simple stuff it's good, but I've ached for Excel on more than one occasion.

                - I can export as XLS, DOC, etc. But I cannot guarantee you the quality of the save. Since I personally haven't tried it, I listed this as a con instead of a pro.

                - If you hate how GMail stores its docs, you won't like this much.

                - Microsoft's integration is a lot better. You can copy/paste from an Excel Spreadsheet to a Word Doc, and it'll retain the cells, formulas, etc. No such luck with Google Docs.

                - Office's UI is just more intuitive. GDocs' isn't so bad it's unusable, but I do ache for it occasionally. Spell check, for example, is a lot friendlier in Office. It's rather basic in GDocs. Oh well.


                I hope that's interesting to you. :)

    • Thumbs up! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pato101 (851725)
      It is interesting that the firefox integrated spellchecker works just fine in the dynamically placeable text boxes.
    • According to Wired [wired.com]; the layout tools are weak, it's limited to a lousy 10 MB, and Zoho's Show [zoho.com] is better for both layout and online collaboration. So, who exactly is this app aimed at (other than just trying to cash in on the "Google" name)?
      • Agreed. Here was my three point usage experience.

        Couldn't load it up on Opera, had to open Firefox. Strike one.

        Couldn't create a simple shape unless I created that shape in a paint application and uploaded it. Strike two.

        No transitions. You're outta there!

    • Re:Not shabby (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rhaban (987410) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @10:04AM (#20652563)

      It also doesn't support transitions.
      Actually, I think that's a good thing. If there's one think I hate more than poorly designed powerpoint presentations, it's poorly design powerpoint presentations with over-animated special effect transitions.
      • Then that is to say, because you find transitions and animated effects to be bothersome they should not be available for other users to use?

    • Nah, WebEx is likely not afraid at all.

      They provide controlled on-demand-when-you-need-it sharing of locally stored documents.

      Google provides central storage of documents that are inaccessible without a network connection. The central storage alone is a major dealbreaker for most of WebEx's customers (who are looking for a reasonably secured on-demand-only collaboration system that works even from behind firewalls).

      • Re:Not shabby (Score:5, Informative)

        by pato101 (851725) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @09:55AM (#20652375) Journal
        The thing comes with a "save as zip" option, which saves the html, images and javascript files, cleanly classified into folders, that allow the presentation to be shown completely offline.
  • ...the example presentation is Proprietary and Confidential. So don't go spreading this link across the Internet! Especially not on one of those high traffic sites like Slashdot.

    [...]

    (Oops)

  • Not so sure... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gravos (912628) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @09:13AM (#20651567) Homepage
    This will definitely overshadow the Zimbra bought by Yahoo yesterday and will haunt Microsoft Office unless they provide a simple webminar option.

    I'm not so sure. Office has a lot of momentum and it will be hard to dethrone it or even steal away just a bit of marketshare unless Google finds a strong way to leverage their position to encourage people to use it.

    For example, Apple has taken some marketshare away from Powerpoint with Keynote (insofar as I've seen people using it instead of MS Office), but only because they have a captive market to sell to.

    • Re:Not so sure... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 140Mandak262Jamuna (970587) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @09:45AM (#20652177) Journal
      It does not have to win over 50% to make a difference. All it [google or any competition of MsOffice] has to do is to reach a critical mass. Currently people keep buying MsOffice because this is the only product that is guaranteed to be accepted by others they work with. And MsOffice freely changes file formats, look and feel, rendering engines, so that others can't interoperate with it. If there is a critical mass of people who routinely return the doc sent by email saying, "Please save it in pdf/office97/... format and send it back to me". And if they get docs in odf and MsOffice has trouble rendering exactly as intended, people will start thinking about office software. Once a critical mass is reached, things will very quickly settle down into an common medium.

      What that critical mass is, I don't know. I would speculate it is around 10% of the market. That 10% will routinely interact with at least 20% of the MS-office customers.

      A good old example of this is the EBCDIC vs ASCII battle. Old IBM mainframes and their teminals used to use Extended binary coded decimal Isomething Csomething and IBM used to sell these terminals, tape drives, modems etc at a nice premium. The non-proprietary open standard ASCII languished for a long long time. Then when the things turned around, IBM had to adopt ASCII eventually and the EBCDIC peripheral market, if it still exists, is nowhere near the ASCII in terms of marketshare.

      OMG I am telling the whole world, how old I am. People think I am posting it while waiting for Social security checks at the post office!!!

    • I'm a big fan of keynote.. it just blows the doors off of powerpoint. My favorite feature is the ability to cut the subject out of a picture so that you don't have a distracting background (example [maushammer.com]). Apple isn't really selling in to a captive market -- I also own powerpoint for the mac and windows.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AKAImBatman (238306)
      It doesn't actually have to dethrone powerpoint to be useful. I was extremely critical of Google Spreadsheet when it was first introduced. And for a lot of good reasons. But Google worked hard to improve it to the point where it was a usable platform. It still fails to replace Excel for all uses, but I've found that it makes a good collaboration tool over large distances. If there's some sort of project information, for example, that needs to be tracked, Google Spreadsheets works in a pinch.

      I can see Google

    • Office has a lot of momentum and it will be hard to dethrone it or even steal away just a bit of marketshare unless Google finds a strong way to leverage their position to encourage people to use it.

      Microsoft thinks that one in three SMB is interested in things like this [slashdot.org]. I found that information with a Google search [slashdot.org], following the hunch that more traditional sharing methods confuse users and ends up leaking information that you would rather keep to yourself.

  • it looks good but..

    imagine yourself at a presentation in front of your bosses and network dies or google returns an error "oops our server made a booboo"

    that would be fairly embarrassing
    • Anyone who uses a tool that says beta [google.com] on the page for a big presentation deserves what s/he gets ...
    • Indeed. The last thing I want to do is rely on an online tool for a presentation. I've taken to having a copy on CD, thumb drive, laptop, and online. Sometimes two or three of those methods fail before one works. Google needs to kick their offline tools for Google Docs into high gear. It's come in 6 months, I bet.

      On the other hand, imagine doing a quick, informal presentation. Prefix it with "please follow along at this URL". Not all companies have WebEx up and going. Not all MBAs know how to upload

    • it looks good but.. imagine yourself at a presentation in front of your bosses and network dies or google returns an error "oops our server made a booboo" that would be fairly embarrassing/

      Right, because that never happens using microsoft products. They are so stable that they never go down during big meetings.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by pagaboy (1029878)
      It looks to me like where this is really useful is in preparing the presentation. Rather than having to email versions around the office, forgetting which is the current one, all those involved can just edit it online.

      As for doing a presentation, Firefox 3 should allow this app to work offline. That's when it gets interesting, and web connections are no longer an issue.
      • Its an issue of how many points of failure you have. If you use powerpoint you have:
        * Your computer failing
        * The projector failing
        * Windows crashing

        If you use Google Docs you have:
        * Your computer failing
        * The projector failing
        * Your internet connection failing
        * Google's servers failing (this does happen from time to time for Google Docs and Gmail).
        * Windows crashing

        As you can see there are two additional points of failure when using Google Docs.

  • Example is reasonably impressive (Score:3, Informative)

    by Random BedHead Ed (602081) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @09:27AM (#20651847) Homepage Journal
    If you don't want to RTFA about the presentation app, the example presentation [google.com] is still reasonably worth checking out. It's impressively like viewing a PowerPoint doc in a browser. The ability to easily publish on the web like this is kinda neat, and the source code of the presentation is surprisingly tidy.

    • It's impressively like viewing a PowerPoint doc in a browser. The ability to easily publish on the web like this is kinda neat, and the source code of the presentation is surprisingly tidy.

      It's not bad, but did not work in a more locked down browser, and that source code is only tidy if you are used to PowerPoint. Open Office exports to normal html with frames that work anywhere and has robot code that's less cluttered. This will be easier for most people, however, and it's nice to see.

      The problem fo

      • One of the funniest things the search above turned up is this presentation [microsoft.com] where M$ makes the case for Software as a Service in late 2005. 30% of SMB are likely to consider "Private web areas with advanced tools for collaboration amongst employees and business partners." I've got bad news for them - Google's work anywhere, someone else does all the work system is far more attractive. Thank you, James Murfin, for an entertaining read.

    • Just me or is there no way to jump around the presentation? Or for that matter even go back a slide if you missed a slide.

  • ... isn't that why I own a notebook in addition to my desktop machine?

    Seriously, why would I want to use anything short of Keynote wherever I am?

    The mobile ads are kind of cool though; I imagine with the advent of Safari on the iPod, we'll be seeing a tonne of mobile versions of things we love now.

  • at 0.49EUR a MB here in ireland with 3G operator three.ie i hope theres an adblocker available

  • too risky, no multi-display presenter tools (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @09:31AM (#20651933)

    Google has finally launched their online presentation tool to complete its office offerings at Google Docs."

    Why this will never take off:

    First- no presenter in their right mind wants to rely on the internet to deliver a presentation. We tell people to have a copy ready on at LEAST one other kind of media, especially if they're giving a big talk. I know people who spread important presentations across multiple media, which is spread across their luggage when traveling. Ie, the presentation is on their USB key in their pocket, but also on a CD in case the key is broken (for example, maybe the plane ride is bumpy and the seatbelt causes the drive's connector to snap off.) We even have them put it on their webmail account in case they lose *everything* for some reason.

    But...do the presentation requiring second-to-second internet access to work? Bwahahahahahaahaa.

    Second- even if you can export it (for example, as a PDF), very few if any PDF viewers support dual-monitor layout. Powerpoint and Keynote, the biggest presentation tools, both support a "presenter display" on the second monitor; you can see things like a preview of the next slide, a presentation timer+clock, your notes for the current slide- or all of the above.

    • About the first point - assuming there is nothing wrong with how the presentation looks and works so it's a fair replacement in that area - Google Gears combined with exporting.

      About the second point, you are absolutely correct - when it comes to that small small subset of people who actually use that functionality. I've seen it demonstrated but can't remember one single live occasion when someone has actually used it. Usually the presenter stands in the middle in front of the presentation and if he/she nee
  • If Google (and OO) wants to complete it, then they need project management AND visio clones. Until then, the MS world will still have the upper hand.
  • There are many cases when an online presentation won't cut it. I've often found myself without a network connection when visiting a potential client, especially when dealing with large corporations. I've also found that the network drop in boardrooms seems to have befriended Schroedinger's Cat - sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't. Wireless may or may not be an issue, depending on the organization. And I've been in several secure nuclear facilities where the mere mention of a wireless network makes eve
  • Another Google Beta is the upcoming Safari support for it. It's been about a year now I recon.

    "Safari support for Google Docs is coming soon!"

  • Offline backups (Score:3, Informative)

    by teslatug (543527) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @10:32AM (#20653167)
    Google really needs to offer an easy way to do offline backups. Right now I use their POP3 functionality to back up my emails, but this is a manual process. And the only way to save these documents is to do so one by one. They need a desktop client to synchronize an offline copy. Maybe a Firefox extension (though their Google Sync extension is pretty badly implemented as it loses bookmarks all the time for me) or maybe some Java app (so as to be cross platform), but either way there is no way I would use Google Docs without being able to easily have my documents. What happens if Google Docs is unavailable, Google decides to close it, or I just plainly want to migrate off of it? If I had thousands of documents stored there I would find myself in a really painful situation.
  • errr...

    or something.

    This video combined with this new functionality I think should serve as a wake-up to the vast number of people doing dumb things with computers... using an electronic system that mimicked a paper system, keeping all the disadvantages and missing all the advantages of new technology. It was of course in Microsoft's (and others) best interest to keep us going down this wrong path for as long as possible. Hopefully those days are finally ending.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA [youtube.com]

  • WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by temcat (873475) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @12:26PM (#20655617)
    With the introduction of Google Presentation, now you can collaborate a presentation online.

    When did the verb "collaborate" become transitional?

  • Online collaborations (Score:4, Informative)

    by jpflip (670957) on Tuesday September 18 2007, @01:19PM (#20656657)
    A large number of the complaints on this thread seem to amount to "I would never trust the internet for a presentation! Give me my trusty laptop any day!" I think these folks are missing the point of this product.

    I work on a scientific collaboration that spans several institutions across the country. We use weekly teleconferences for specialized subgroups and occasional online meetings of the whole group to keep coordinated on what each other are doing. For these occasions we're always dealing with distributing presentations over the internet in a reasonable way. We usually post PDFs or HTML on the web, but we've had problems in the past with our own servers going down during telecons. We're also often editing our talks at the last minute, and we can have problems where someone downloads their PDFs before one of us posts his or her last changes.

    For collaborations like ours this is a very intriguing product. I trust Google's servers more than my group's, to be honest, and we can always post backups on our own server. A consistent-looking presentation that I could easily edit right up to the last minute (or even collaboratively) is appealing. I grant that there are other solutions which may be better in some cases and that I'd probably never use this for a conference talk, but it's still intriguing for groups in our situation.
    • Probably a Slashdot wedding, where iPhones are thrown instead of confetti.

      Wait, did I say a Slashdot wedding? Who am I kidding...

      • Probably a Slashdot wedding, where iPhones are thrown instead of confetti.

        Wait, did I say a Slashdot wedding? Who am I kidding...

        No, you're right. If someone on Slashdot is getting married, it must be because they're super-rich, and therefore they would be able to afford to throw iPhones around like confetti at the wedding.

        -:sigma.SB

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