Why Google Apps is a Serious Threat to Microsoft Office

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Written by Bernard Lunn / February 22, 2008 3:27 AM / 56 Comments

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This is the perspective of a “skeptical, later early adopter”; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don’t spend time on productivity tools that may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total breeze.

I think Google Apps has reached that point. The significant advantage is collaboration.

Since I started working on a new project where we all agreed to use Google Docs from the start, I have hardly used MS Office at all – even on other projects.

The lead product in Google Apps for me is their word processing product – i.e. the MS Word alternative. That may be because I am a wordsmith, but also because it is the most mature. I still use Excel, as Google Spreadsheet is both a pain to learn and not good enough for power users. Also there are better ways to collaborate with Excel, such as eXpresso. I don’t use Google Presentation, but that is because I am weaning myself off Powerpoint – as I think it is no longer the best presentation medium. If I want to persuade with words, I use words. If I want to persuade with multimedia, then it is time for video such as YouTube or maybe Seesmic and screencasting tools to show off an app. A PPT deck is very flat by contrast.

Google was very smart to take a loosely coupled approach. So I can use Document and ignore the others. I assume that the Spreadsheet product will be ready for prime time pretty soon. Google may buy/build services that make video plus screencasting plus a bit of standard presentation stuff a breeze for everyone. But until then, I can use Gmail and Documents and gradually get enticed into the other stuff.

The one big missing piece has been offline access. It was clear that Gears would enable this at some stage. It now appears that is not so far away. That will be a major driver for me to standardize more on Gmail; currently I split between Gmail and Outlook; and that is a pain to manage.

Not only is Google miles ahead of MS on collaboration, they have moved ahead on mobile access. I have long believed that mobile would be a key driver for Web Office. Now I can get access to my Docs from my Blackberry. When I switch to an iPhone with that bigger screen, I will be able to say “sayonara” to my laptop even more. In that world, MS Office looks like a real dinosaur.

The latest aha moment for me came when I started using Remember The Milk. I was very skeptical at first. The last thing I needed was the distraction of learning another way of managing to do lists; first to do, learn new way to list to do items, grrr! When I saw RTM load into Gmail as a sidebar I warmed. Then I saw that RTM was very mobile friendly and I was sold (well took the free version at any rate, I do feel I should send that $25 for Pro as Bob T. Monkey is clearly an amazing developer and a huge inspiration to coder-monkeys everywhere).

Seriously, the point is that Google Docs is a platform. The two smart people in Australia (Ed, what is it about you guys in the Southern Hemisphere?) who created RTM can plug into Docs as if they owned it.

The other platform out there for wordsmiths is WordPress. It’s free, open source, has a plug-in architecture and there is a Dummies book about the software (a sure sign of market traction). So the looming real battle is maybe Google Docs/Blogger versus WordPress. Or, Mozilla Thunderbird versus Gmail. Microsoft really does look like they have the classic “Innovator’s Dilemma“. I thought that Ray Ozzie’s mission was to cannibalize Office before somebody else did it; if that is the play, they are leaving it a bit late!

There is one other reason why Google will win this battle. They have the economic engine. I am not just talking about cross subsidization from their search engine cash cow; Google do that just like Microsoft did it from their Windows/Office cash cow. What is interesting is that Google has figured out how to make ads in Gmail at least vaguely relevant. Sure there is some dumb stuff there, but quite a few that are relevant. The point is that the search engine has more to work on, all of my text and not just my search query. Our expectations on search are so low, that just “not totally dumb and occasionally slightly relevant” gets a cheer. I have actually clicked on a Gmail ad.

They can clearly also insert ads in Docs. Do I care? It is a bit spooky, but as long as Google really takes the high road on privacy, I have the freedom to ignore and I may occasionally even find something useful. I assume I can always opt to pay a subscription and be ad free.

Solid economic engine, good on collaboration/mobile, increasingly mature/ready for prime time…Yes, Google Docs looks like a major winner.

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• The most advantage think of using google services is to use online.

  But i dont think microsoft will go down for this.

  Posted by: Dizi | February 22, 2008 4:22 AM
  

• i agree with dizi

  Posted by: Firma Rehberi | February 22, 2008 4:23 AM
  

• Welcome to the party:

  http://www.geardiary.com/2008/01/26/is-google-apps-a-microsoft-office-killer/
  I dumped Microsoft Office for a month for a story on Geardiary — then dumped EXCHANGE at the end and have been using GMAIL (via Google for Domains) ever since.

  It is my opinion that Microsoft will quickly be forced to make some acquisitions to bolster their “Cloud” offerings.

  The current slates of Microsoft Live apps seem to mostly host your data off-site while largely serving to protect the mother load monopolistic Office Suite.

  However I think Microsoft is increasingly out of control. They can’t get a stable OS. PC Magazine has just reviewed the latest Apple Leopard OS calling it one of the best OS’s ever (paraphrasing).

  They’re not getting a lot of press about it — but I believe Microsoft is on the ropes with both OS and Office. This is going to become an increasingly bigger problem.

  Posted by: Wayne Schulz | February 22, 2008 4:45 AM
  

• I’ve always beena fan of Google Docs. Not just because of the collaboration, but the ease of use. 8 times out of 10 when I type something its just a quick note. I dont need MS Word’s bells and whistles.

  Posted by: JohnofScribbleSheet | February 22, 2008 4:59 AM
  

• true

  Posted by: shane | February 22, 2008 5:08 AM
  

• Great post Bernard. I consider myself in the same adoption area, I don’t try out every new service, I wait until I can replace an existing one. I’ve tried out Google Aps before but at the beginning of this year made the switch. The bloated beast of Outlook is gone (except as middle ware to sync my iPhone and Gcal – can anyone figure out how to do this directly?). And my most pleasant surprise has been the effectiveness of Google Spreadsheets. It is really powerful and totally sufficient for multi-page pro-formas and relatively complex modeling. After skipping Outlook 2007 b/c I didn’t want to learn yet another new toolbar layout (thats all MS has left it seems), I’m very pleased w/ Google Apps and we are migrating the whole company to it.

  Chris

  Posted by: Chris Schultz | February 22, 2008 5:45 AM
  

• The “aha” moment for most people will be when they need to share a document with someone else to complete a task. Forcing their hand a bit to use the app to collaborate with someone else.

  They quickly discover that there is something there that they’ve never had before and it was an effortless and very productive experience (unlike most new tools). Then they look back and notice that all the features they needed were there too. You can hear the “Hmmm…” from a block away.

  Posted by: Steve | February 22, 2008 5:55 AM
  

• 
  This is a very funny post. It seems as if you are praying for Google to win!

  My truth is that Google Docs and other copytheft products are toy apps for now. Noone serious in his work would depend on such kind of applications. It has a looooong way to go until the dinosaur-spreadsheet program (google powerpoint) does not consume 100% power for just setting the slide title

  Posted by: panefsky | February 22, 2008 5:57 AM
  

• Great article. I also use docs, RTM, and WordPress and love them all! Great combination with my blackberry, but I am itching for an iPhone too!

  If “dummies” books are a sign of market traction then here is another point to add to your article.

  “Google Apps for Dummies.”
  http://www.amazon.com/Google-Apps-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/0470189584/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202523746&sr=8-1

  Posted by: Jeff VanDrimmelen | February 22, 2008 5:58 AM
  

• Microsoft Office has evolved into a very complete set of tools for a professional writer or professional financial analyst willing to invest heavily in a long and steep learning curve.

  These apps have become so feature loaded that they define the term “Bloatware”

  Once upon a time there was a nifty little sports car that customers loved.
  The marketing guys figured that they could charge a lot of money for an upgrade.
  And so a family sedan replaced those neat little sports cars
  The marketing guys figured that they could charge a lot of money for an upgrade.
  And so a large SUV was born
  The marketing guys figured that they could charge a lot of money for an upgrade.
  And so the SUV became a bus
  The marketing guys figured that they could charge a lot of money for an upgrade.
  And so the Bus became a tandem axle cross country truck

  And now customers are driving that truck back and forth to the super market.

  Posted by: Dave Small | February 22, 2008 7:00 AM
  

• # 10, thanks. I may invest in that Dummies, clearly lots of productivity tricks to lear.
  # 11, yes but when you want to present and send online, you put it into PDF. So Word and PPT are no longer the final output, just an interim part of the process. That is a weak position.
  BTW, if Microsoft buys Yahoo they will have great Outlook like email and that may change the game.
  # 9, no I don’t have a “home team”. I don’t work for either or have any interest in either. This is spectator sport and maybe investing game but I can assure that my buying/selling GOOG or MSFT would not keep anybody at those companies up at night

  Posted by: bernard lunn | February 22, 2008 7:33 AM
  

• I am using http://spanningsync.com/ to Sync my Google Calendar with my Mac iCal — which in turn syncs to my iPhone.

  Also, on the Blackberry side – Google has a synch for the Blackberry Calendar to Google Calendar.

  http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/index.html

  It is my belief that Microsoft is in a lot more serious trouble in the Office arena than is commonly recognized.

  Posted by: Wayne Schulz | February 22, 2008 7:33 AM
  

• “I think Google Apps has reached that point. The significant advantage is collaboration.”

  It’s important to collaborate, given particularly, That MSFT has been slowly lurching in the direction of collaboration tools (for INTRA-nets, at least) with their product “Sharepoint”, which competes with Lotus Notes. Needless to say, on the open Web, one would be insane to trust any personal data to MSFT because of their horrendous record on data security– and personal security. Thus, GOOG has an opportunity to establish a strong, early beachhead.

  Posted by: Tom B | February 22, 2008 8:37 AM
  

• Open a Google doc. Paste an image. Oh, that’s right, you can’t Ctrl-C copy, Ctrl-V PASTE an image into a document. Ok, so INSERT an image. Now proportionally resize the image so it retains its aspect ratio. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. Now crop the image. Oh that’s right, you can’t.

  Now insert a table. Now grab the edge of a column and resize the column. Oh wait, you can’t. Now delete one of the columns. Oh wait, you can’t.

  Now type some text and select it. Choose one of the fonts on your computer instead of the six fonts Google licensed from Microsoft. Oh wait, you can’t. Create a new paragraph style. Oh wait, you can’t. Change the font color and background on some text. Now copy that formatting to another paragraph. Oh wait, you can’t.

  Now do a find and replace on some text. Hmmm, why is that feature marked as “experimental?” Oh, because you don’t get to choose which instances get replaced, it just replaces all of them. And there’s no way to undo afterwards.

  People just love to use software where some incredibly basic feature like “search & replace” is marked with “WARNING! EXPERIMENTAL! Use eye protection! This could blow up in your face!“

  I’m sure Google docs works for you and your needs, but for very basic stuff, Google docs is chock full of FAIL.

  You “assume” the Spreadsheet product will be “ready for prime time pretty soon,” but do not tell us why you think so. Do Google products usually come flying out of beta?

  You tell us it’s all gonna be great when Google Gears finally kicks in and you can work without an Internet connection, then you point to a review where the guys says, yeah, they enabled “experimental” offline use, but, uh, you can’t actually edit documents offline. I assume this will also be done “pretty soon?”

  Then you gush about how Google Docs is a “platform” — don’t you remember Microsoft Word is too? Do you not remember macro viruses? When malware authors realize they too “can plug into Google Docs as if they owned it” then there’s a chance they’re gonna 0wn you.

  You talk about being able to view Google Docs on your Blackberry, when mobile device support for Microsoft Word documents is already pretty commonplace.

  Finally you tell us that “Google will win this battle” is because “they have the economic engine,” meaning, they have advertising in all their stuff. Yay capitalism. I know the last six times I used a word processor, I kept thinking it needed more advertising.

  You undermine your own argument by adding that you assume you “can always opt to pay a subscription and be ad free.” LOL! Order now and get a free set of steak knives? Now how much would you pay? But wait, there’s more….

  The irony is you could go out right now, and get a whole Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote) for $120 at Newegg, and you can install it on three different computers. And it works great and has tons more features than Google Docs. And it has no ads. Imagine that!

  $120 / 3 computers = $40 per computer. Assuming you upgrade every 3 years, that’s about $1.12 per PC per month for the MS Office suite. Why would I spend THAT kind of crazy money for software I use day-in, day-out when I can bang my head “for free” against the lame “experimental” features of Google Docs?

  You started off your post saying “MS Office can be annoying, but it does work.” By “be annoying,” I assume you mean “cost money.” I mean, you’ll get around to coughing up $25 for RTM someday, right?

  You said “If I want to persuade with words, I use words.” Next time maybe you should try different words.

  Posted by: Karim | February 22, 2008 9:17 AM
  

• #6, I agree with you on the effectiveness of Google spreadsheet. I started using it for collaborative tasks last year. Now I find myself using it for most of my personal and work related tasks.

  With better group management, I can see it replacing Microsoft Office for small businesses.

  Posted by: Chetan | February 22, 2008 9:30 AM
  

• #14, I agree with you totally Karim.

  Posted by: mido | February 22, 2008 9:52 AM
  

• Karim, I love a good debate, so I will unpick your arguments and reply.

  Cut & Paste not as good as Word. Yep, I am sure you are right. Who cares? When I want production quality it is onto PDF tools. But that is a tiny part of the time that goes into creating a doc; the biggie is collaboration. I know that is not true for everybody. If I was writing a novel alone in my attic I would use Word. Thats not a big use case.

  Yes I do expect continuous and rapid improvement from Google as a) its early in the R&D cycle for them b) they have the $$ to invest c) the prize is big d) they seem pretty smart to me. Wanna bet against those?

  By annoying, no I did not mean “costs money”. Zero upfront cost is needed to get people to experiment but the cost vs productivity makes $120 or similar totally irrelevant once somebody has decided it is useful. If the ads do bug me (today they don’t) I will happily pay.

  What bugs me? a) instability, Word is a terrible crasher b) lots of overhead on start-up c) lousy at collaboration d) lousy at mobile.

  Posted by: bernard lunn | February 22, 2008 10:02 AM
  

• Everything you like now I liked 6 months ago.

  Google Docs is not the platform – Google is the platform and Google Docs is the consumer of the platform.

  Posted by: Mark Bean | February 22, 2008 10:18 AM
  

• I have to agree with the author – The ability to colaborate is the primary reason my company uses googles online service.

  we have encountered a few hiccups along the way, and I think Karim in particular has made some good points as well. Google IS notorious for an endless Beta cycle.

  My hunch is that google docs will continue to be expanded upon and improved, but I would not be so quick to declare Google the winner in the short term.

  Posted by: Automotive SEO Guy | February 22, 2008 10:21 AM
  

• “Cut & Paste not as good as Word. Yep, I am sure you are right.”

  Just to keep karim honest: Cut and Paste doesn’t always work in MS-Office, either. I have observed numerous occasions where 1) Word wouldn’t paste into Excel 2) IE wouldn’t let me “copy” to the clipboard. Sure, GOOG apps may be LESS mature than that. But, for goodness sake, MSFT has been trying to copy “cut and paste” from the Macintosh since 1984 and they STILL haven’t got it to an acceptable level of reliability.

  Posted by: Tom B | February 22, 2008 10:25 AM
  

• I agree largely with what you say, but I think Microsoft’s recent acquisitions indicate that they are about to step into top gear in this area, so don’t count them out yet.

  I have written more extensively on the subject here – http://tomscrace.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-apps-threat-but-dont-count.html

  Posted by: Tom Scrace | February 22, 2008 10:34 AM
  

• I believe you forgot to mention this, MS has a mobile office ‘access’, but only if you stick to their products: Windows, Office Suite, ActiveSync & Windows Mobile.

  Edit your documents on the computer, save them on the ActiveSync synchronized folder, email them, or access them via ftp/http/wtver from your windows mobile device, make your edits to word/excel/powerpoint/onenote and send them back to the desktop.

  Posted by: lmjabreu | February 22, 2008 10:48 AM
  

• Bernard, you mentioned that you use “PDF tools.” I’m not sure if you mean Adobe Acrobat specifically, but just so you know, the last few times I saw anyone have trouble with Word, it was because of the Acrobat add-in, which is notoriously buggy.

  You originally said in your post that “MS Office can be annoying, but it works.”

  Then I said that by “be annoying,” you must mean “costs money.” (ha, ha)

  Then you replied that what you meant by “annoying” was that it was unstable, that it was a “terrible crasher.”

  So MS Office is unstable and crashes, but it works? That makes absolutely no sense.

  Where is the line for the Google Kool-Aid? I hear it has a bit of a rat-poisony aftertaste compared to the Microsoft Kool-Aid. But hey, what do you want for free?

  Posted by: Karim | February 22, 2008 11:35 AM
  

• Microsoft sharepoint is actually very good at collaboration.

  Posted by: Alex | February 22, 2008 12:18 PM
  

• My needs for presentations aren’t very substantial, and I kind of like Google Presentations. I may use that some, or I may just stick with PowerPoint.

  As far as Google’s “word processor” goes, I am genuinely horrified at the inadequacy. Mainly, at the almost total lack of any semantic information that you can include in your document using the styles. The only semantic styles available are paragraph, h1, h2, and h3. HTML has a pretty effective system for encoding semantic information and associating style information, and Word 2007’s is finally excellent with the inclusion of style sets and inline styles in addition to the traditional block styles. In Word, you can define any semantic styles you want and encode detailed semantic information. Google? You get semantic header styles. Woo hoo.

  Posted by: Andrew Norris | February 22, 2008 12:19 PM
  

• 

  Posted by: Şiir | February 22, 2008 12:32 PM
  

• I’d like to add that Google is on record saying that Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations are not meant to satisfy the MS Office power users, i.e. those that utilize the heavy-duty analytics capabilities of Excel and the advanced formatting options in Word and PowerPoint. GOOG is constantly evaluating utility vs. clunkiness. 90% of MS Word users use only 10% of the features and I bet it’s similar for Excel and PP. Google Docs is aiming to replicate the most useful features that appeal to the majority of users.

  Posted by: Andrew Miller | February 22, 2008 12:50 PM
  

• # 27, nail on head IMHO

  Posted by: bernard lunn | February 22, 2008 1:03 PM
  

• This is the case of a very particular user: very frequent collaboration, very often in need of on the road access. Mainstream users are more likely to write on Ms/OpenOffice regularly and occasionally use GDocs for collaboration. Apart from the social functionality (which rocks) GDocs can’t be compared to feature rich apps like ms/open office. It’s always web2.0 mantra: take a good web app, take advantage of it but then start irrationally using it beyond its limits..

  Posted by: Citizento Ni | February 22, 2008 1:12 PM
  

• Karim, very interesting and well-versed posts! It is important to hear from people like you who has an educated opinion and, above all, a point-of-view different from the one adopted by the very vocal GOOG fans. Many people easily accepts the popular view (e.g. “”GOOG is good, GOOG is great”) and jumps on the bandwagon too quickly. So, it is useful to see a contrarian view, such as yours, stick out of the wave of cheers.

  Posted by: Dice Lu | February 22, 2008 1:29 PM
  

• Bernard Lunn makes some excellent points here, and this is also why I think GNU/Linux has an advantage on the desktop going forward with Web 2.0. Users’ biggest reluctance has been a web-only app or suite. However, when a local version of the same is offered (as he mentioned with Google Gears) as Zoho now does, there is no downside, and suddenly you’re not dependent on a connection to continue working on your files.

  Just as Vista doesn’t offer any significant advantage over GNU/Linux on the desktop, Office 2007 fails that same test by virtue of MS-OOXML. Google Apps and ODF are a perfect marriage.

  Posted by: Zaine Ridling | February 22, 2008 2:29 PM
  

• You nailed it. The key is collaboration. Google Apps might lack the bells and whistles of MS office but this is Web 2.0 age. Nobody cares about bloated software with bells and whistles. It is all about collaboration. If I can sit in US and work with a guy in China or India on a document at the same time, what is the point in having the bells and whistles which can’t be heard in India or China or, even, New York. Collaboration is the key and Google got it right. The end of feature rich apps is not just a trend in Web 2.0 era. It started the day Google released www.google.com. People started ignoring bells and whistles on that day when Google was launched. People wanted apps that will give them what they want. They got fed up with apps that tell them what they should do. Google started it with search and extended it to apps like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, etc.. In their quest to make their cash cow fatter and fatter, Microsoft missed a golden opportunity to understand what people actually wanted long back. Google Docs is just the one of the last few nails in Microsoft coffin.

  Posted by: krishnan.subramanian.name | February 22, 2008 3:54 PM
  

• Software loaded from CD to every computer. How quaint.

  Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to be tied to a specific monopolized platform? Run the software through a common open platform like a web browser.

  Oh wait Microsoft doesn’t have that. The best they can do is synchronize to their monopolistic platform.

  Posted by: Wayne Schulz | February 22, 2008 4:31 PM
  

• Now with OOXML as a back end for Microsoft documents, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a nifty (yet maybe limited) Sliverlight Online Office appear soon. It will be combined with online storage, collaboration, and integrate smoothly with existing Microsoft Office products.

  I love Google Docs but there are a lot of Microsoft Office users out there. Its a far smoother transition that Google Docs-like features appear in the next version of Word and “just work” with users existing documents and work flow.

  Posted by: Johnx | February 22, 2008 4:36 PM
  

• I’m confused. Every time I read an article like this one extolling Google Docs I have to wonder, is the author using a different version than the one that shows up on my screen? Unless there’s a bunch of submenus that I’ve missed there’s not so much there, there.

  And what is there doesn’t work so well. Formatting becomes a nightmare. I ended up with formatting that absolutely nothing would remove. I often could not reformat text (font, font size, font color, line justification) and even deleting the text and starting over did no good. Like Dracula rising from the crypt the old formatting would reappear.

  And why do they think the left margin should be a handfull of pixels from the edge of the window? And how do you change margin width?

  Can anyone claim that Docs has a quarter of the features of Word (buggy though they sometimes are)? Zoho had similar formatting issues although I thought it was better than Google overall.

  If you need to compute in the cloud, must do the new thing, or have to avoid Microsoft and advertise it proudly at least use Buzzword–the features it offers at least seem to work, so far anyway. And it is very easy on the eyes.

  (That brings up another oddity. Google seems to be favored by many hipsters, avant garde types, people in the know who tend to be sharply critical on these issues, and yet all Google apps get a pass on aesthetics even though they look as if they were designed by a Soviet apparatchik who emigrated to Miami Beach–plain and dull, awkward, heavy fonts, busy layout, and with all that seaside motel robin’s egg blue, or is it a blander shade of turquoise?

  I defy anyone to guess how many different link styles there are on any one page–buttons, underlined text, boldfaced text, not-underlined, not-bold-faced text–all sitting happily next to each other in a row of options. It’s a jumble with no styling cues to lead the eye and help make sense of the page.)

  Posted by: John Kilian | February 23, 2008 12:53 AM
  

• I thought the article was great. The greatest advantage to Google Docs in my opinion is accessability. You can never find a document as quick using MS Office – even if it stored on your own computer.
  I agree that Docs miss some very nice features, like being able to do a word count on a selected part of the text and not the entire document. There are tons of those “small nice features”.
  On the other hand, let’s be honest. Word is terrible for doing something out of the ordinary. Sure you can insert pictures and do tables, but it is not reliable. It often mess up the document.
  Even for the simplest layout tasks – I find myself instantly leaving Word and use some real programs like Indesign. That’s not something everyone can do of course, but Word should never be used for layout.
  Word might seem like it is easy to format texts, but in reality it is as bad as Google Docs. And using Word to format HTML? Please, the crappy HTML produced by that program should never be published on any webpage.
  For me it comes down to an easy word processor and for that purpose Google is the best because it does not tie me down to one computer, it stores multiple versions, autosaves and can be shared with others easily.
  Word has grown to complex. I have several times had to help my father after some setting had gone wrong inside a menu. I have found some settings in multiple places, causing confliciting effect. So don’t tell me Word is bug free – it is packed with them. But since there are so many features, you could use it for years without running in to one of the bugs…
  But I am looking forward to Docs adding some more features, especially on the Spreadsheet. On the other hand – adding to much features would inevitibly lead to a more complex program that would be as messy as word. You can’t have both worlds really…

  Posted by: SD | February 23, 2008 4:13 AM
  

• Just wait until Google builds tasks into Google Calendar natively. It’s a question of when, not if.

  Posted by: Scott Mace | February 23, 2008 5:39 AM
  

• Google Apps appeals to students and users new to office app products.

  Large companies want uniformity, compatiblity, and control across the platform. Google Apps won’t make any inroads to business until the functionality is that of Microsoft products.

  Posted by: Pet Food Man | February 23, 2008 8:19 AM
  

• Any article that talks about the lack of collaboration through Microsoft’s Office suite and doesn’t even mention the word SharePoint anywhere can’t be taken seriously. Not only does Microsoft offer their enterprise Portal solution, but they do offer a “free” WSS option which allows for advanced development (webparts, workflows) and one major difference over anything Google will EVER offer …

  YOU control your data.

  The simple fact that enterprise data will be stored outside company firewalls and internal networks will doom Google’s office suite at the enterprise level. Can you really trust a company to control your data after it already parses your emails so it can display relevant ads and who has simply “turned off services” such as the SOAP API without giving users an equivalent?

  So let’s see where we stand right now -
  1) MSFT does in fact an online/web based collaboration system which is actually superior in functionality (although it does need significant improvements in cross browser rendering) and let’s users still control their data.
  2) A far superior offline product
  3) Far more functional products
  4) A wider range of products including Visio, Project, etc.

  Didn’t MSFT also just report good numbers during their last earnings report? That’s right, they did led by their Office suite.

  This article, and the author comments, is nothing more than wishful thinking and it will be quite a few more years until the Office suite is threatened.

  Posted by: Hagrin | February 23, 2008 1:47 PM
  

• #14, try to right-click somewhere on a Google doc (say, on an image, a table, a column, a cell, a row) you’ll be surprised at how many features you might have missed and marked as “impossible” in Google Docs (plus image resizing while keeping the ratio).

  Posted by: WindPower | February 23, 2008 4:22 PM
  

• Collaboration is a key. That’s a good point. Another, maybe even more critical, turning point will be the e-paper display. A lot of MS Office features are for formatting. Why are they there? They are (were?) for printing. To print pretty paper documents for a meeting. As we print less and less on papers, we won’t need so many of them. I already print much less than a few years ago. When e-paper displays reach a critical mass, formatting features will become add-ons rather than core features. So, if I were Google, I would not bother to improve those features.

  Posted by: hyokon | February 24, 2008 4:44 AM
  

• # 39, Microsoft’s insistance on collaboration going through Sharepoint is an excellent example of how they have gone wrong. Microsoft made it big by empowering the individual with a PC, compared to mainframe/minicomputer controlled apps. When the PC finally found acceptance by IT, Microsoft became the corporate “you never got fired for buying…” successor to IBM and they lost their focus on the individual. What they forget and Google (and WordPress, Remember The Milk and other “non-enterprise worthy” apps) knows is that enterprises are made up of many individuals who “vote with their mouse”.

  Posted by: bernard lunn | February 24, 2008 4:53 AM
  

• “$120 / 3 computers = $40 per computer”??? – we call that kind of pricing PIRATING.

  Posted by: kevin | February 24, 2008 8:04 AM
  

• I didn’t know that.

  Posted by: nils | February 24, 2008 11:42 AM
  

• #39, did you even read the article? Your comments have nothing to do with what was presented. Oh btw, do you think your data is safe with MS products? Are you that naive?

  Posted by: Raider Nation | February 24, 2008 2:26 PM
  

• Graphical mainframe computing is sure something isn’t it?

  #37 you are spot on.
  Task management and workflow are the two emerging arenas, and amazingly no common web tools seem to offer them as part of groupware. (google, zoho, yahoo, msn, (horde))

  One question though, how does one administer roles and group file access among the shared documents? There doesn’t seem to be the idea even of folders and roles?

  Posted by: g8orade | February 24, 2008 2:37 PM
  

• One other note, does anyone know if KDE and related KProducts, particularly office, runs on the net in a collaborative way?

  It seems to be lurking quietly out there in 2008 building some momentum also.

  Until any spreadsheet has a million rows and can do pivot tables like Excel, it’ll be no competitor. Just like from Oracle now, we’ll dump it into Excel Pivot engine for analysis, then do something else to share it.

  Posted by: g8orade | February 24, 2008 2:41 PM
  

• # 47. We used to use Excel for “reporting” purposes. Very cumbersome process that is also vulnerable to errors. Use a reporting tool like Crystal and point it at your database. Your end users will be amazed. Note to any serious application person, excel is a bandaid, get a real reporting tool.

  Posted by: Update | February 24, 2008 3:07 PM
  

• @ Karim
  > Open a Google doc. Paste an image.
  > Oh, that’s right, you can’t Ctrl-C copy, Ctrl-V PASTE an image into a document.

  Personally, i can copy-paste images into docs from (for example)
  http://images.google.com/images?q=tree
  Drag from one side to the other of most images on the web & copy, paste works a treat
  Also – hold down ctrl to keep image aspect
  Unfortunately, standard desktop image files don’t work so well & tables are rather disappointing

  nice to hear someone argueing the points out, though
  Thanks,
  - imma

  Posted by: imma | February 25, 2008 4:43 AM
  

• Richard et al,

  In an attempt to sway my way into the “comment of the day” category I had two option. Firstly to attempt to coerce utilising the parochial card. That is – awarding to a fellow Kiwi would be the decent, honest and, dare I say it, Hillary-esque way to do things.

  I then remembered that you’re building an international play here and thoughts of parochialism must be as far from you mind as…… the summit of Everest to continue a theme.

  So plan B. I’ll pen a witty, yet thought provoking response to articulate my take on the subject. To this end…. read on (or click on the link if you prefer….)

  http://diversity.net.nz/office-productivity-apps-a-rebuttal/2008/02/26/

  Ladies and Gentlemen,

  Our previous correspondent told us that Google docs is full of fail. While his grammar would suggest otherwise, the substance of his comment deserves response. Without wanting to mix metaphors here, I think we have a combination both of failing to compare apples with apples, and not seeing the wood for the trees.

  Apples with Apples

  Google docs is a very new offering that is trying to primarily be a collaborative tool. Contrary to what the previous comments would have you believe, it doesn’t intend to recreate MS Office in all its bloated functionality, rather it seeks to create a quick, intuitive and easily utilised offering. It is also SaaS and as such has the ability to be upgraded on the fly, with new features rolled out at will.

  Compare this if you will to MS Office which has been in existence for decades, is primarily about creating the purty-est docs possible rather than collaboration, has a relatively steep learning cycle and has multi year release intervals. Get my drift here? They’re two different beasts entirely. Fact is that at this point in time people may well utilise both solutions, one where speed and agility are paramount and one were feature bloat is needed.

  While I’m guilty in the past of having prophesied GDoc’s ascendency at MS Office’s expense, I need to clarify that my contention was based on GDocs gaining more functionality to put it in a position where it provided everything imperative that MS Office does, but in a collaboration-enabled setting.

  The wood for the trees

  Now hyperbole comes to the fore. We’re talking culture shift here. Paradigm change. This one is big.

  GDocs is an example of where the future of computing and collaboration will be – that’s not a functionality discussion, it’s an existential one. While it is entirely valid to argue for or against GDocs based on functionality, this is a completely different argument from the one broached by the original poster: namely why Google docs is a serous threat to MS Office. It is NOT a threat because of what it does or doesn’t do at this point in time. It IS however a threat because it embodies the agility, speed, flexibility and, dare I say it, organic-ness of what will become the norm in the computing future.

  For all these reasons ladies and gentlemen, I can only but concur with the original author. Google docs IS a serious threat to Microsoft Office.

  Thank you

  Posted by: Ben Kepes | February 25, 2008 12:33 PM
  

• It’s true that most users aren’t power users, and that many people only use basic functionality.

  But most of the things that Karim pointed out *are* very basic — these aren’t super advanced features.

  Moreover, when a large organization chooses a word processor (or spreadsheet or presentation tool) to standardize on, they make sure that the *power*users* are satisfied. They don’t say, “Well, 70% of the users won’t change column sizes in tables, so that feature isn’t important to us.” Instead, they say, “All word processors have basic functionality–let’s make sure that our dedicated word-processing people get the functionality *they* need and let that dictate which tool we use.”

  So power features do count.

  All that being said — Microsoft is getting its ass kicked in terms of collaboration. SharePoint is a very useful tool, and lots of organizations are getting tons out of it (and probably more could learn to), but it has nowhere near the ease of use and collaboration within documents that Google does.

  So if organizations need *lots* of internet-scale collaboration *and* have power users, where do they turn? At the moment, neither Google nor Microsoft has a great answer for that.

  So the question is, which can happen faster: can Google build out their feature set, or can Microsoft build out their collaboration story?

  I think Microsoft has the inside track here–they’ve got a decade and a half of features built into their suite–but it remains to be seen if they can actually beat Google to the finish line.

  Posted by: Dan | February 25, 2008 12:44 PM
  

• This blog post confirms that Google Fan Boys are no better then Apple fan boys.

  They will take shit and keep using the product even if there are better products in the market.

  Hey Bernard Lunn, how much google paid you for writing this BIASED “OPINION”? Come on be honest.

  Posted by: Ha ha | February 25, 2008 8:00 PM
  

• I think some people need the features MS Word gives them. Some don’t. MSFT fan boys are just as brainwashed as Mac and Google fans. I’ve heard comments over & over for the past 10 years how MS will crush Linux and vice versa. Haven’t happen yet. So I guess everybody is wrong.

  As for me, since I’ve started using Open Office and Google Docs 18 months ago I haven’t touched Word. For my personal draft docs I can access them almost everywhere. I take documents created in Office at work from others and do my edits in OO.org and pass them back. Nobody knows the difference. The PDF output in OO.org works great, and it’s free, unlike the Adobe plug-in for MS Office.

  I remember reading that Google Docs was initially created at Google so the employees can collaborate internally. I’m sure they own a few copies of MS Office, OOo, and Adobe suites too, but for the success that Google has enjoyed, I guess such crude, home grown software did not bring down their company in any way. It probably is good enough for quite a few other organizations and occasions.

  Posted by: mapvoid | February 26, 2008 8:07 PM
  

• Yep, and Java was a serious threat to the MS desktop…oops.

  Posted by: Mark | February 26, 2008 10:32 PM
  

• Hi,

  Came to your article from DZone.com

  Some key points to take into consideration:
  1) MS Office will be forced to offer a similar product to Google Docs
  2) Zoho is more advanced than Google Docs.
  3) I do not believe in a total online/offline document. I cannot see Google Apps replacing MS Office/Open Office since people IMHO always want the data to be stored both locally and online.

  Posted by: infonote | February 26, 2008 11:15 PM
  

• check the ThinkFree office package… its Java Applet i think this is the THREAD to Microsoft Office not google .

  Posted by: JOKe | February 26, 2008 11:51 PM
  

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