Google Releasing an Office Suite

prostoalex writes "Google Apps for Your Domain is Google's entrance into the office productivity world, but contrary to popular expectations, the company is not shipping word processor or spreadsheet for corporate use just yet. Google, Inc. bundled e-mail client (Gmail), shared calendaring environment (Google Calendar), instant messaging client (GTalk) and HTML page generator (Google Page Creator) to be used across specific domains. The service will be ad-supported, reports the Associated Press." From that article: "The free edition of Apps for Your Domain is, like Google's main site, supported with ads. By the end of the year, the company also plans to launch a paid version that will offer more storage, some degree of support, and likely, no ads. A price for this edition hasn't been set. Providing e-mail and other applications for businesses moves Google closer into what has traditionally been turf occupied by Microsoft Corp. Earlier this year, Google released a program that builds simple Excel-type spreadsheets but lets users access them on the Web."

Google Spreadsheet

[aussie_a]

I would have been very surprised if they had released Google Spreadsheet for business use as it just isn't anywhere near Excell's functionality yet. If they want to compete with such a heavily entrenched program, then they're going to need to make it at least as useable before it will be accepted (which Google seems to realise).

Also it's pretty slow, so that's a big downside as well.

As a user of Writely and Google's Spreadsheets....

[Anonymous Coward]

the emphasis is on SIMPLE. Forget anything the least bit beyond straight text/numbers. Even relatively simple formatting (SKU's looking like they're printed with - appropriately placed) isn't going to happen. The Google version as it works now has a limit on 50,000 cells, which, seems like a lot, but probably isn't so much. There's a nice sharing thing built in which would make it pretty dang handy for a not too fancy fantasy football league. I guess it fits in that niche between tables on a website and Open Office, with a bias towards collaboration but that's about it.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[babbling]

It is pretty difficult to see how any serious business would use Google Spreadsheets. I reckon most businesses would find OpenOffice [openoffice.org] to be a more attractive option. As a side-note... I loaded up OpenOffice Portable [sourceforge.net] on a computer I was working on today, and a few people who saw it commented that MS Office wouldn't survive now that there's OpenOffice Portable. I found that interesting.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[shitzu]

Well, but you sortta can access it from anywhere in the world with any pc any time. And you sorta can share the spreadsheets without rolling out any servers and buying any licence fees, so thats a big upside as well.

My main concern...

[bangenge]

is that even through all the advancements we've been able to make over the years, online applications are still slower than those that you install on your desktop. it _might_ be more secure since google _should_ have backups. hacking would be another story though. but i would definitely see this as a low risk set of tools given that it's free, the docs are portable and you just need a browser to start working. will it be enough to dethrone ms office? i don't see it that way though. but it should be enough to make bill and steve worry a bit. *insert chair joke*

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[gkhan1]

I used to use exclusively OpenOffice and I think it is great, but there is one thing that stands in the way of it being wildly used: design. For all it's greatness, it doesn't look very good at all, infact, it's kinda ugly. Meanwhile, I just downloaded Office 2007 which looks, and feels, amazing. Say what you will about Microsoft, but they sure as hell nailed it with Office 2007. Not only does it look great, but their revamp of the toolbar system (the ribbon) is fantastic. Very slick. Right now, I do everything with it.

OpenOffice needs like 10 professional designers to really hunker down and figure out a way to make it look better. That's easily the number one complaint I hear from people when I try to convince them of using OpenOffice.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[Erectile Dysfunction]

Do you use Google Spreadsheets for anything yourself?

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[theguyfromsaturn]

True enough. There is still some things where it is useful though. A few months ago, I was wishing for something like that, as I was teaching a class and sent all the TAs a spreadsheet for them to fill in when they corrected each assignment.... I thought that having done the work for them it'd be easy enough to just have them share the file every time they added stuff. I was dreaming of course. The files were shared how they pleased... I only got a copy from each of them at the end of the class... given that some students signed up late it was up to each T.A. to decide where they were going to stick the name. Some decided that the end was the right place to put the new additions while others thought they should immediately be inserted in alphabetical order. And not all of them could spell correctly the name of the new students. Needless to say, that there was a lot of reconciliation to be done before the final compilation of grades could be made. In that case, a google spreadhseet, at its current level of features would have been exactly perfect. I was wishing for something like it... then just as the class ended google came up with its deployment. Oh, well. Next time, if I ever teach a class again, I'll make sure to use it. I didn't need a very sofisticated spreadsheet then. Just something that could produce an output.

Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[tomhudson]

Since its all client-side javascript, I can see them addressing both bloat and functionality by having users custom configure what functions they need the spreadhseet to have, and having only those javascript libraries loaded by default.

This would also open it up to 3rd-party developers, who could submit their scripts as add-ins.

Want your spreadsheet to automatically text message you when a certain field hits a critical value? Want your spreadsheet to email a diff when Joe Luser saves it? Wnat yur spreadsheet to look up stuff in an external database based on a crc64 of the values in other fields? No problemo.

Google Calendar

[Kohath]

Office Suite or not, Google Calendar beats MS Outlook's Calendar by a huge margin. And GMail searches are very fast, while Outlook email searches are very slow.

Google has a good start on a superior replacement for Outlook.

For the rest of the office suite, there's OpenOffice.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[orasio]

Hmmmm
It's hard.
They keep telling that the next version will be great.
I stopped believing when I switched from msoffice97 to msoffice2000 and its magically dissapearing menu options, remember that?
Now I use openoffice, and in the places where it's different from msoffice, it makes a lot more sense.
Now I'm using msoffice at work, I am kind of forced to use msoutlook2003, and I can't make sense of this. Funcions are really hard to find, for example, search is awful (google desktop makes it somewhat better) and to see message headers (to see why it doesn't respect spam assasin headers, broken header parser, not a usability issue, though) I need to use right button menu - options (!!).

I'm not wasting my time trying yet another version, that I have learned in more than 10 years that has a big chance to be crappy.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[mysticgoat]

OTOH, there is a lot to be said for keeping graphic development like charts local, rather than shared among a group. The workflow I envision is using Google Spreadsheets for data collection and shared reference resources where its collaborative nature really shines. Then develop summary reports and graphics by downloading and importing into Excel or OpenOffice and having at it.

I shudder to think of what business graphics produced by a committee would look like, or how long it would take to decide what color to paint each of the slices of the pie. Also, developing locally would help assure that the impact of the graphics on your audience wasn't diminished by their prior exposure to the rough drafts.

If I were planning an office tools entry

[hey!]

for Google, the next step would be to create a javascript/css/html based presentation application to rival powerpoint.

Powerpoint is the weak link in the chain of MS Office hegemony. It does the least of the MS Office suite to justify its proprietary format. Building a web standards (or defacto subset of standards) based application means immediately every desktop computer has a compatible player.

Next GWT provides a toolkit for creating "active content" that runs in our presentations, a nice "aftermarket" for small software developers. Add a halfway composer/ide with webdav support and it could become, for many, a replacement for FrontPage as well.

Re:Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[It'sYerMam]

What you're suggesting seems to be a non-retarded version of Excel's menu-hiding. Which, although a step in the right direction was, well... retarded. It generally resulted in half of the useful menus disappearing, and the speed and memory usage not changing, because it still had to load the gubbins into memory. Perhaps dynamic loading of function-modules is the answer, whereby you have a core set of features, a set which the user selects to automatically load (with preset, customisable user-types) and the rest can be loaded on-demand with some nifty shortcut, dialog and various other methods (so the power user can load modules as fast as possible, but the rookie doesn't need to memorise things he or she may be uncomfortable with.)

Shared Hosting killer service?

[h3rald]

Google Apps include:

- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Google Chat
- Google Web Page Creator

It sounds to me more like a competitive shared hosting solution for small business, rather than an office suite.

(More info: http://www.h3rald.com/articles/view/google-apps-fo r-your-domain/ [h3rald.com])

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Doctor O]

I wonder... if she wrote a book in it, would she use one cell per paragraph, page, or chapter?

Aw, make that image go away from my mind. *shudder*

Just want to mention that I regularly get sent pictures for use in ads and brochures... in Word. They call them "Word images", accordingly. "Hey, I just sent you a Word image of the diagram you asked for."

Thanks Bill. Thanks indeed.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[winnabago]

This reminds me of many of my coworkers, who otherwise know quite a bit about document layout, large format printing, and the like (we're an architecture firm). It is a common belief around here that the only way to make a PDF is to copy-paste an image into Word and use the menu command. I frequently try to explain how to use our PDF writer/print utility that we pay for a server licence, support, etc. If you can't paste it, apparently it can't be a PDF.

Re:demand?

[owlnation]

How much demand will there really be from corporate users? ...

Not really sure why the parent is considered insightful. I would consider it more short-sighted, most especially when supported by wikipseudofacts.

Google is a corporation. Google probably knows, or at least very much should know, what a corporation needs in terms of security in an office package, particularly in light of the behaviour of its competitors. Assuming Google wishes to go down this road they would need to be prepared to offer secure solutions to potential corporate clients. I would be astounded if they haven't already thought of that.

Sheesh, they are pretty smart guys, they aren't jumping in head first with a half-finished product. The volume of beta products shows they are prudent, and apparently concerned with delivering quality. If they want the corporate world there's a good chance they can eventually take it.

Writely is good. It is already capable of completing the vast majority of real everyday WP tasks. It is fast and simple - far faster and simpler and more appropriate than Word for most things. Word already has far too much stuff crammed into it, and the new version seemingly even more deadwood than the current.

It may be marginal, but a corporation could save money and increase productivity by switching to this product once it is fully ready. The only issues would be ones that you raised - which are solvable...

I'm sure the demand is there.

Re:Define serious. 90% of businesses are tiny.

[mike2R]

I don't really see very small companies changing their current habits to be honest. I think they'll continue using pirated copies of major apps in the way they always have.

Link to your Statistics ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people use far less than 10% of the functionality. I've seen people using Excel on daily basis, but don't know how to even use formulas."

Do you have a link to the statistics on the world usage of Excel?
Is that 10% based on your own observations?

It really depends where you work at.

For example, working at a cube farm with data entry temps, does not compare with working in a 4th floor, full of engineers and statisticians.

Re:Link to your Statistics ?

[dk-software-engineer]

Do you have a link to the statistics on the world usage of Excel?
Is that 10% based on your own observations?

I knew I'd get that. ;-)

It's a rule of thumb that 80% of the users only uses 20% of the functions. I think that for Excel it's much more extreme, because so many people uses it, and there really isn't very many powerusers out there.

It really depends where you work at.

I wasn't talking about the place I work, I really don't think that company matters much to the world market of spreadsheets. ;-)

If course there are large groups of powerusers here and there, but I doubt that it's even 10% of the users. And I'd say you're a poweruser if you use just 10% of Excel.

It's kind of like a car. There's a lot of users, but not very many know more than what you need to know to drive them. And even that is often lacking. (Peoplo not checking for oil, not checking the lights, have fog lights on when there's not fog...)
I guess most people use far less than 10% of the thingies you could do something with in your car. Ask around, how many people has operated their fuelpump manually? Read errorcodes from the enginecomputer? Upgraded firmware in it?

privacy concerns

[john_uy]

based on the text being ad support, it will be very unwise for business to use it even if it is free.

assuming they put up the increased functionality of a word processor and spreadsheet (even presentation,) then they will practically be able to read the documents of everyone. it's like giving your ideas, corporate secrets, intentions, plans, etc to google for them to see. even if they are for "ad purposes", it is still scary. basically, they already know me inside out from the searches i make (even though i disable cookies by default, my isp gives me an almost static ip add.)

no thanks. i'll keep private data with me. i've got open office just in case the free argument goes into place. i'm beginning to appreciate microsoft now as google is able to collect much more information from me than them.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[meatspray]

Yeah the reading format is positively awful. I get calls all the time from new users:
them:"My Word is broken!"
me:"How's that?"
them:"it's only printing two pages"
me:"how many should it have printed?"
them:"four."
me:"What's the last thing ir printed out?"
them: BLAH BLAH BLAH
me: "well that's the last thing on the document, is it in reading layout?"
them: "no ... well what's that mean"

It displayed on four pages so they want to see it print on 4 pages. Sad really.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Brickwall]

"she better have some CHARTS AND GRAPHS with her or her presentation won't be entertaining enough."

I'm a data analyst, and I know there are times when the figures are enough, and other times when charts and graphs get the point across much more quickly and accurately. Go read Edward Tufte, and come back when you've learned something.