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Google Docs Aims At Microsoft Office Live
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Apr 01, 2008 10:00 AM
from the ready-steady-edit dept.
from the ready-steady-edit dept.
mikesd81 writes "Channel News reports that Google took an important step forward Monday in its rivalry with Microsoft Office Live, reporting that Google Docs will allow users to edit word processing documents offline. Google said users of its Google Docs word processing application can use Google Gears to save and then edit documents without being connected to the Internet. 'The offline capability will be limited to word processing documents, though the company plans to add it to spreadsheets and presentations in the future.'"
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Rivalry? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any real competition yet between the two in terms of user base?
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You're right, there is no rivalry. OpenOffice is the only thing within striking distance of MS Office. Google Apps is a joke.
Regards,
Re:Rivalry? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Rivalry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yeah? I bet you have not even tried it. No matter what Google haters and similar mods say, it is a very good online office application. In fact, I do not use MS Office any more (and have not even bought it with my latest pc) and guess what? I have not missed it at all, and in fact sharing it with others was never so easy. Sending docs by attachments? Not for me, anymore.
Different people and organizations have different needs. Saying "Its a joke" is as good as saying "MS Office is a joke". It serves a particular segment of the market and it serves it pretty good, and its getting better.
Now fuck off.
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Re:Rivalry? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Say, how do you write a numbered list like the following in Google Docs?
1. Point one
1.1. Point one point one
1.1.1. Point one point one point one
(I don't really know how I can emulate the indenting here but just imagine the above list items were properly indented)
AFAIK, even simple things like the above are often impossible with Google Docs.
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I have tried it. Google Apps is a joke when compared to MS Office.
That's fine that Google Docs meets the needs of many people - I think it's great when any software is useful. Just have the sense to not put it in the same division, league, or even planet as MS Office. For all the anti-MS arguments there are, they have some solid productivity software.
In a knife-fight between (MS office+sharepoint+exchange) and (Google Apps beta v0.
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OpenOffice is the only thing within striking distance of MS Office
And even then, it often leaves much to be desired. I honestly applaud the efforts to come up with an alternative to MS Office. Because although MS offers a lot of functionality with it's software (You can produce some nice, stylish docs, as long as they stay relatively small) it also contains some absolutely incomprehensible faults;
1) Why the hell doesn't Outlook provide decent IMAP access??
2) Why can't I copy my Word2007 equations to Powerpoint???
3) What is up with that crap Master Document implementation
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5) Profit!!?
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I know a lot of folks on slashdot complain about the MSFT deal (from what I read and heard from developers o
Re:Rivalry? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually not a bad document collaboration tool without all that endless mucking about with email attachments and mapped network drives - not to mention some "quick and dirty" PDF conversion to boot.
And I can't for the life of me work out why so many people whine about tools that are basically free to use. If you've paid to use something and it's not very good, you've every right to complain - but if it's free then it can only be of benefit if you use it and absolutely no loss to you whatsoever if you don't.
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Agreed: MS Word is King (Score:2)
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Google Apps is AMAZING for anything that needs collaboration. It's not as full-featured as MSOffice, but it's meant to be used for different things.
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Commoditization of software (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a genius idea, which is an example of how forward thinking and good PR can bring in higher profits than unadulterated greed (yes, telecoms, I am looking at you). However, what this also means is that with its large cash purse, Google can continue to provide further services, channeling more and more monitor-watching eyes to its own webpages. Its purchase of Youtube provides ample evidence that Google won't be upset if you spend 100% of your computing time, on a Google-branded internet.
Re:Commoditization of software (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd never really thought about it before, but the way you put it, this sure sounds a lot like "embrace, embrace, extinquish." Google gives stuff away for free (Microsoft bundles games, anti-spyware, anti-virus and browser to OS) to gain more ad impressions (gain more software market). Google won't be upset if you spend 100% of your computing time, on a Google-branded internet. Microsoft won't be upset if you spend 100% of your software budget on MS products.
Although I use both of their services, I have no allegiance to MS or Google. It just seems like history repeating itself. We can only hope our new overlords are kinder and gentler. The one thing that spooks me a little is MS has never been in control or had access to the extreme amount of personal data Google does.
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Re:Commoditization of software (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's in significantly different markets and using different strategies. They're not pursuing marketing techniques to get market share, they get market share through having a superior product. When you use Google, you're not locked into using them all the time because of other considerations; there are no barriers to using yahoo instead.
Their google docs don't use a proprietary format, they use everyone else's formats, including word, pdf and openoffice. This means that the barrier for moving from google docs to another system is only the hassle of transferring the files, not in the formats being incompatible. They're not practicing lock-in of any kind, which is the fundamental difference between Google and Microsoft at this point: Google's playing nice, Microsoft is playing however they can.
So the comparison is dumb and inflammatory. Google's business model has been wholly different from the Microsoft model and (business-wise in the US) free of dirty tricks and underhanded maneuvers. Punish and condemn google for the bad things they've done, not for being the most successful software company to come around recently.
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Ok, uhmmmm duh? (Score:2)
The only REAL problems is trusting the online storage with your data. As far as that goes it can be encrypted with better than 128bit encryption and keys remain local only if you like. I don't think that Google Docs is competition to MS Office, it's
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It seems useful for companies too small to have "real" IT and who don't care much about data security (corp secrets and such). For much of the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the time.
It's that 1% to 2% of the time, IE on an airplane, at the airport (without wifi) or when the ubiquitous high speed internet at home or at the office is mysteriously down due to a)The backhoe effect b)bad storms, flooding, hurricane, c) maintenance, d) ISP Messup, e)your modem gets hit by lightning e) gremlins
That 2% of the time, which could be 10%, or 1%, really stinks because it never happens at a convenient time. Offline would be good then.
My wife uses
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I'm looking into similar with a server at home as the sync point, then syncing that to Google et al online. Hoping to combine the sync mechanisms of several phone/pda types in the mix and have full familial synching even when the intarwebtubes are down... let the server sync it when they come back up.
Opposite talk (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google Docs is horribly primitive. I use it for writing todo lists and notes which I can access from different locations. I haven't had it yet once successfully open a doc file I've been emailed.
I see no reason to use it as a stand-alone application offline, unless they've put a far better version online in the past week or two. Which they need to if they're serious about online applications.
Source Code (Score:3, Informative)
I find Google Docs very useful (Score:4, Insightful)
The addition of Google Gears based local document storage over the next few weeks will not be a feature I ill need often, but it will be good to have.
BTW, I use a utility tht you can find on the web (gdatacopier.py) to periodically back up all of my Google Docs - just in case.
Google docs: paragraphs please (Score:2)
consortium needed (Score:3, Interesting)
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Google Docs is constrained by what browsers can do. They do attempt to support ODF as much as they can, but there are limits. Hopefully, things will get better with Firefox 3.
Apple appears to have made a deliberate corporate decision to be incompatible with OpenOffice. If you submit a feature request for supp
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Apple appears to have made a deliberate corporate decision to be incompatible with OpenOffice.
I disagree with this. Rather, I suspect Apple has not prioritized ODF and created their iWork applications based upon their own format for convenience. If Apple as a company was trying to be incompatible with OpenOffice they would not have added ODF support to TextEdit. I would venture to guess that Apple sees the business case for supporting import and export to MSOffice formats, but is as yet unconvinced about ODF and whether it will succeed in the marketplace. I hope that they understand that they can
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Apple made a deal with Microsoft and they have Microsoft Office on their platform. That's something that helps them a lot in competing with open source desktop operating systems. Why would they want to lose that advantage by supporting ODF?
They can also qualify as a vendor for purchases in the future that require ODF (as some government agencies are now moving towards)
They can do that with
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Apple made a deal with Microsoft and they have Microsoft Office on their platform. That's something that helps them a lot in competing with open source desktop operating systems. Why would they want to lose that advantage by supporting ODF?
Apple doesn't really compete with OSS in the desktop space. It might in the future, but to date OSS does not have enough market share to count. Apple does compete with Microsoft and with Microsoft's customers. Microsoft has been leveraging their office suite to gain an advantage in other markets. Ceding the office suite market to MS hurts Apple's iWork sales. It hurts their computer sales too. MS having monopoly influence in the office suite market, but not leveraging it directly against Apple in the comp
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OSS is widely used on the desktop, probably more widely than Macintosh. You're confusing the desktop with the home market.
Currently, I wouldn't recommend it.
What does that have to do with anything?
Except TextEdit has both read and write support for ODF.
Well, hey, no need to buy iWork then, right? Don't make me laugh.
The first reports of iWork in development were in 2003.
Yes, and they could have adopted OpenOffice XML at the time, then moved to ODF
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OSS is widely used on the desktop, probably more widely than Macintosh. You're confusing the desktop with the home market.
While numbers are hard to calculate for OSS desktop OS's, I haven't seen numbers to support your assertion. That isn't too important though because you are misunderstanding the market distinctions. Apple doesn't sell desktop OS's. They use vertical bundling to bypass the desktop OS market and instead compete in the computer system market. OSS OS's have a very small market share pre-installed or even OS-less whiteboxes.
What does that have to do with anything?
It speaks to the viability of NeoOffice in professional use as a competitor to Apple'
Apple and ODF (Score:2)
Apple made a deal with Microsoft. Microsoft agreed to write an Intel version of Office, and to license MSXML to Apple for iWork. (I refuse to call it OOxml, that would be contributing to trademark infringement on Open Office). In return, Apple agreed not to support ODF in iWork.
Notice how clever that was. Apple said they won't put ODF in iWork, but they never said that they wouldn't put ODF into TextEdit, whic
Hybridization (Score:3, Interesting)
I really think hybrid applications that are both traditional and Web apps are going to be the way of the future. Local applications don't allow you to edit from any machine, are not automatically kept up to date (payware), and don't allow developers to easily leverage ad revenue or subscriptions. They are not as simple for collaboration and publishing to the Web. They are not as easily targeted to all platforms because of lack of standardization for running applications across OS's
Web apps are reliant upon a network connection, don't provide the security demanded by some use cases, and are not good at finding geographically close users. Performance is limited by network throughput and latency.
Really in a free market the direction of development is almost certain to go to apps that connect to internet services or apps that are also internet servers. They both come down to the same thing, just differing in the emphasis on decentralization or centralization. Given that the network is the more common limiting factor today (especially in the US and the third world) hybrid apps like this offering are probably going to be very big, very soon. The only thing holding this back has been Microsoft's ability to cripple Web technologies and their monopoly influence in the office suite market.
How are they saving locally? (Score:2)
Google Docs vs Microsoft Office Live (Score:3, Insightful)
Google Docs fail because it is not Microsoft Office, and I'm not going to convince my cow-orkers to learn a new set of office applications.
Microsoft Office Live fails because it is too complicated and confusing for me to learn, much less teach. I couldn't even figure out if the documents are under version control, and the "integration" into the office applications is a joke (it is very slow and requires multiple indirections just to open a document, and it takes a separate navigation bar).
So while my workplace is a lost cause, I use Google Docs with my family. It has a simple and intuitive interface, and my family are much less tied to MS Office than my workspace.
Re:iPhone (Score:4, Informative)
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