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."

Comments

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.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[dk-software-engineer]

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.

It doesn't need to be. 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.

There is so many users out there that doesn't need functionality, only ease of use. They would love a spreadsheet that only has the very few features they actually use.

Personally I find Excel a bit limited in functionality. I use a lot of formulas, but I probably still don't use even 2% of the functionality. But the ones I need is often missing. I don't care about the 98% I don't use, I care about the 5 I need that is not there. Have those, and the 2% I use, in an easily accessible web-application, I'll probably use it daily, with ads and all.

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 to be a more attractive option. As a side-note... I loaded up OpenOffice Portable 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

[Tx]

While I think you're right in general, Google Spreadsheet didn't do charts last time I checked. If people only use 10% of excel, I can bleeding well guarantee that charts is in that 10%. For mainstream business use, that is pretty much essential.

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.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[cubicledrone]

For mainstream business use, that is pretty much essential.

Yep. If a middle management type is clop-clop-clopping through the marble-floored reception area with her steel-rimmed glasses and her Vallejo broach towards the conference room where the hairpieces will sit around and guffaw over cracked lobster while they decide how to divide the salaries of all the people they're about to fire, she better have some CHARTS AND GRAPHS with her or her presentation won't be entertaining enough.

Because as we all know, as long as the presentation is entertaining, it doesn't matter if it's completely wrong. How else could she afford 17-inch wheels for her S-I'm better than U-V with enough chrome to turn Mount Vesuvius into the world's greatest IMAX theater? Priorities, man. Priorities.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[giorgiofr]

It looks like hitting on your hot manager and being turned down hurts a lot.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[joshetc]

17's on an SUV? Pfft its all about the 22's

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[unity]

This isn't flamebait. This is funnier than 95% of the lame stuff modded funny.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Erectile Dysfunction]

Well done.

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:Google Spreadsheet

[aussie_a]

What's the point to accessing and sharing something you don't want to use though?

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Erectile Dysfunction]

Pivot tables, charts, and templates would all be a good start in providing a larger percentage of the functionality used in various business functions, though I have to confess to having spent an insignificant amount of time playing with Google Spreadsheets. It is obviously true that no competitor needs to implement everything that Excel offers to be useful to different groups, but the people using Excel without any formulas aren't really the intended audience of the program. They might as well use Gnumeric or OpenOffice.org's Calc if they don't require Excel, though that isn't to suggest that there is no niche for Google Spreadsheets.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[meatspray]

Open Office has another, more serious downfall.

Take a slightly complex word document from a client. (bulleted lists, block indents, embedded objects)
View it in word, view it in writer.
Both are readable, but they do not look exactly the same.
Margins are off, wrap doesn't line up, linespacing is slightly off.
You can fiddle with the document to make it look the same, but it needs to be identical by default.
It's pretty darned important for people to see the page as it was intended.
And no PDF isn't really an option of you want to edit the content and use it elsewhere.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Nichole_knc]

Just cause it has a 'pretty' GUI does not mean that it has function.... Many ppl prefer 'slim and trim' interfaces with the OS or program enviroment. When you make a 'pretty' interface for eye candy it becomes just that .... Eye Candy .... and loses all hope of function leading to bloat and wasted clock cycles to be appealling to the eye... IMO

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Thrip]

In my experience, the vast majority of spreadsheet users do not use charts or even formulae. They just use them as very simple databases. In my company, every single person uses Excel at least once in a while, because that's how the company phone list is distributed. Spreadsheets are also used as shared to-do lists, bug trackers, requirements lists, and test matrices (despite the fact that we have specific software for all these tasks). Any time you have a little bit of tabular information to throw around, people reach for Excel. In my eight years in office jobs, I have seen hundreds of spreadsheets -- I have only seen one person generate a chart from them. I'm sure it's different at other places.

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.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[gkhan1]

Oh, yeah, the geek "Who cares about design?" defence. The fact is, design matters, it matters alot. Design makes you more productive, it makes you understand how the program works, it makes the program appealing. Have you actually used Office 2007? If you have windows, try it, I'm telling you it's really cool. It makes all the features obvious, it makes it clear what results each option does. And you can't complain about the function of MS Word, it can do pretty much everything that you ever need to do. The only exception, I guess, is PDF-exporting.

These kind of comments are pretty silly, ever heard of sour grapes? Use OpenOffice for a while. Then switch to Office 2007. I can guarantee that you will have a more pleasurable experience with it.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[cloudmaster]

Stupid pointy-hairs and their desire for data visualization.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[CastrTroy]

I find that you get exactly the same results if you type a document in MS Word 97 and open it in MS Word 2000. Even though they are supposed to be completely compatible, the documents always look different. The same can also happen between the same version of MS Word if the computers have different printers attached to them. I don't know why the printer makes a difference, but it does. What it comes down to is the simple fact that .Doc is not a publishing format. It isn't meant to maintain 100% of the document formatting across all computers and it almost never will. Add that to the fact that it's proprietary, which means that OO.o will have a really hard time making anything look "exactly" the same. PDFs are different. They are built for the sole purpose of ensuring that the document looks the same on every computer using the document.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[PHPfanboy]

Yes and it's horrible. I used to do Filemaker work which was so much easier to work with and reuse than Excel. However, when every computer has Excel on and Filemaker is an extra 250 USD per seat (or was something like that) it was a big fight.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how long it took M$ to come out with such wonderful design? 10 years? 15 years?. Few days ago there was another /. story about users hating the new "ribbon" interface:

ahref=http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/25/ 1229226rel=url2html-30815http://slashdot.org/artic le.pl?sid=06/08/25/1229226>

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[orasio]

You are not making sense.
Winword doesn't have that feature.

A lot of things need to happen so you can reopen a document in another machine, and see the same that the guy who produced it.

At least, you need the same version, the same platform, and the fonts the guy used. But if you have that, openoffice is just as good, the same documents looks the same if you open it with the same version of the same program.

I stopped using winword at office2000 (I have winword2002 right now at work, but I just don't use it, so I can't judge it), and winword produced documents didn't look the same across different machines. There was always some screwed formatting when dealing with documents with some complexity.

You can't say that openoffice is worse because it fails at the same task as openoffice. You could say it's slow to load, maybe. But screwed formatting is not an openoffice issue. Version 2 achieved exactly that: the same grade of compatibility that different msoffice versions have. I think now they should forget about further msoffice compatibility, and start moving in its own direction. People are accustomed to this migration problems among msoffice versions, it's only one more towards openoffice, and from now on, no more issues.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[adbloggers]

I love open office too, although it takes some getting used to. http://www.adbloggers.com/

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[hacker]

Use OpenOffice for a while. Then switch to Office 2007. I can guarantee that you will have a more pleasurable experience with it.

Put $85 million dollars behind the development of OpenOffice.org, and then we can think about comparing the two.

How much have you donated to improve the free office suite you're crucifying here?

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[aplusjimages]

Give it time. They are constantly updating the Google Spreadsheet. When it first came out it was very weak. Now it could hold up against MS Works Spreadsheets. It even has Freeze Pans, which I don't think MS Works Spreadsheets has. In a year from now that web based program will be very good.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Doctor O]

Greatest thing I've ever seen was a complete user's manual for an online media (think ad-booking) software, 32 pages, with illustrations and screenshots, completely built in...

Excel. I *was* impressed. I have seen a lot, but this was genuinely special.

Seems as if for a secretary with Excel, everything looks like a table.

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

[hacker]

Take a slightly complex word document from a client. (bulleted lists, block indents, embedded objects)
View it in word, view it in writer.
Both are readable, but they do not look exactly the same.
Margins are off, wrap doesn't line up, linespacing is slightly off.

Microsoft properly asserts that OpenOffice is not 100% compatible with their product. Microsoft, however, has apparently decided not to support the OpenOffice formats either, for which they have no excuse: the standards for OpenOffice documents are publicly available, whereas Microsoft makes it a habit to sue people for reverse engineering their own formats.

Show me where the documentation for the Microsoft Word .doc format is, and I'll make sure those corrections make it into the proper hands for fixes in Oo.org.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Kadin2048]

This doesn't make sense. Google Spreadsheet has one feature -- sharing, online, from anywhere -- that Excel can't touch. In all other respects, it's admittedly primitive. But if you want to do that, there's not really any question. You either use Google Spreadsheet, or you find some sort of roundabout way to avoid the problem and use Excel. (By trying to email the documents back and forth, which isn't really online in any significant sense of the word.)

Google's doesn't offer much in the way of data analysis, but if you just wanted to work on something with someone else, online, it's great. And the best part about it that it exports to Excel, so then you can take it and do all your analysis/reporting/charting in Excel. They're not mutually exclusive.

There's really no compelling reason to use Google Spreadsheet if you're satisfied with Excel as a single-user, desktop PC application; the people who are going to find it interesting are those who are constantly running into the limitations that Excel has when you attempt to use it collaboratively.

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.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[cubicledrone]

So what makes you think "hot?" The glasses or the broach?

Most of the managers I worked for who claimed to be female had faces that could stop a clock. Nice try though. Leave the schtick to the pros there, Sparky.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[tzanger]

Open Office has another, more serious downfall.

(Microsoft Office file format bug explanation deleted, as Microsoft Office can't do this even between versions anyway)

What I see as the biggest OO flaw is the spreadsheet. Graphing *sucks*. Mightily so. It's extraordinarily limited, it's slower than molasses in January, it's impossible to print a chart on a page (honestly, I've tried and tried to select just the chart and say "print this, fit it to one page" -- is this just a glaring oversight, or am I just stupid?). It's got some strange UI modes but those are just strange because I'm used to the way selection and cursor movement in selections work with Word... but honestly... charting/graphing simply *blows* in Open Office. I feel that is the single biggest failing of the suite.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Anonymous Coward]

All I've really wanted from the spreadsheet is an grid-like text entry that saves each cell after hitting RETURN.
It would be nice to have multiple users to be able to add data to a spreadsheet and have it 'always refreshed'.
I dont really need the formulas and fancy stuff, just give me a text grid that multiple people can update.

Almost like this AJAX refrigerator magnets demo:
http://www.broken-notebook.com/magnetic/

-E

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[brian.glanz]

Design: it's not only about what's inside the application.

One of the basic problems I have with OpenOffice: it's called "Office." One of the basic problems with "Google Apps for Your Domain," well in the vein of bad naming, is a comment even necessary? So bad is Google's product design at the identity level -- you know, where you create a great name and logo and make sense of yourself to your target markets -- so bad is Google at this that we are all knee-jerking with "Google Releasing an Office Suite."

Lots of other comments point out correctly, as do all the articles and as does Google, that this is not an Office Suite per se. It's "apps for your domain." When you read from their reps and execs, Google describes well their place in the market, and as other /. comments in weeks past have observed, so it is: not directly competitive with MS for business productivity, rather overlapping in small business, education, personal use, the lighter like. Why did they fail to wrap up this wisdom in a neat product identity?

Some of you are thinking "maybe that's their point. They want to be compared to MS without saying it themselves, they want to be defined as an alternative because they believe most people don't use most of MS and ...."

OK maybe, GOOG is anything but traditional, they move their pieces in combination and they've a history of being steps ahead ... maaaayyybe but I doubt tanking a product's identity to this degree can be a net positive. It's a gambit with a valuable piece, too early on to ensure the strategy's success without an absent-minded opponent (like the Office Lite market?).

My working theory: they're Geeks. As any Google Watcher knows, the engineers run the place: they don't believe in their Sales Force, in Marketing, not even in Customer Service. We all think Google is heavy into user experience, but maybe they're just usability and web analytics nerds. This is not only about "Apps for Your Domain," Google too often misses the boat on product identity. We have seen more than a few of their truly great, charming, promising applications fade away. What if they had been marketed?

It's as if Googlers actually listen to Jakob Nielsen :o while missing how tone-deaf the man is when it comes to pleasing the eyes and ears. Jakob, if you're out there man ... BG

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Daengbo]

I worked for a CFO once who claimed that Excel was the only app anyone needs. She did her memos in it and I'm sure she would've written a book in it if that was on her todo list. F'ing amazing. I always just stared at her when she told me that, which was often.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[ElleyKitten]

I have Office 2007 on my work computer. It's very very pretty. I like using it. But, it doesn't do anything that Office 2003 doesn't, nor do I do anything with it that I can't do in KOffice. All it has over the other office suites is prettiness. Are pretty graphics worth the $100+ price tag? Not to me.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder you are a cubicle drone. Jealous much?

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

[ElleyKitten]

What's really frustrating is that the same thing happens if you take an .odt and open it in both KWord and OOWriter. Then you can't even blame proprietary evilness.

Of course, I can't really be mad at OO and the K people, because everything has this problem (or I could just be mad at everyone?). Even PDFs look different between Adobe, KPDF, and Foxit. *sigh*

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Urza9814]

...it looks EXACTLY the same. The people I"ve shown it to didn't even know it was a different program.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Put $85 million dollars behind the development of OpenOffice.org, and then we can think about comparing the two.

Well, maybe that's the point.

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:Google Spreadsheet

[I'm Don Giovanni]

It's not true that Office 2007 doesn't do anything that Office 2003 doesn't. Office 2007 has many new features and extended capabilities. Hell, even Excel's maximum spreadsheet dimensions (number of columns and rows) has been hugely increased (if I recall, the increase is literally exponential).

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why the printer makes a difference, but it does.

Print area. Font support. Paper size.

Paper size is usually the big PITA if you collaborate internationally. With TrueType, font support is less of an issue than it used to be. But print area is the killer. Some printers have a huge unprintable gap at the top and bottom of the page - almost an inch in some cases. When faced with a crap printer Word could print the document with headers and footers missing, or reformat the document. It chooses reformatting as the lesser of two evils.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[lahvak]

As other people noted, this is also true with different versions of Word, actually the problem is even worse there. When I was in graduate school, I had a part time job working for a textbook publisher. We were supposed to use Word for everything, but we had a very strict short list of features we were allowed to use. I remember it said no automatic numbering, no numbered nor buleted lists, no page headers nor footers, etc. The reason was that the documents had to go to a number of people who had different versions of Word, and it had to work well for all of them. If we used some of the "prohibitted" features, some of the editors got complete garbage, not just small differences in linewrap and margins.

You see, theoretically, with a well designed document which uses things like paragraph styles etc correctly, it should not matter what the margins are, where the lines wrap, what is the line-spacing etc. For example changing the margins will change the line wrap, page breaks etc, it wil change the way the document looks, but it should still look perfectly fine, there should be absolutely no functionality lost. The problem with this is that I have never ever seen a well designed document created in Word. I have seen some close calls, but there was always some place where the author used line-breaks and tabs instead of properly formatted and indented paragraps, or something like that. It is just to damn hard to create a properly formatted document in Word, and to damn easy to take some quick shortcut, which works just fine until somebody opens the document in another (version of) wordprocessor, include the part of the document in another document, or change margins of font or something else.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think there is a way in hell a business with any common sense would put their spreadsheet data online - especially so with all the privacy concerns and data-sharing that's been going on recently. The risk of an employee uploading a financial document or something with private data on it is far too great.

Now, when Google releases a stand-alone server environment that can be plugged into the local network at your corporate office and allow employees to use these features within the private network is when we'll see these apps become capable of competing for corporate dollars.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[gkhan1]

How is this relevant in any way? My point was this, when selecting an office suite for corporate or personal use, which one is superior, MS Office or OpenOffice? Right now the answer is easily MS Office.

And if you're going to rag on MS Office GUI, lets not forget that much of the OpenOffices design is clearly inspired by the MS products. They have always made the best office products.

I'm all for MS bashing, but when it comes to Office suites, they do a very good job. A very good job indeed.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[gkhan1]

Exactly. Disregarding everything we know about Microsoft and the open source community, as pure apps, which one is better? It's Office 2007, easy. That's all I'm saying.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Erectile Dysfunction]

So you hit on your ugly manager, and she still shot you down? Ouch.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Anonymous Coward]

How else could she afford 17-inch wheels for her S-I'm better than U-V with enough chrome to turn Mount Vesuvius into the world's greatest IMAX theater?

Puh-lease! 17's are so yesterday. They went out of style the day the manufacturer's started offering them as a factory option. 20's are starting to get old, too. These days it's all about the 22's and the 24's, foo!

(Posting without karma as this is a post that is sorely undeserving of an extra boost.)

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[warith]

"it needs to be identical by default. It's pretty darned important for people to see the page as it was intended"

I'd like to make the same complaint about Word's new "Reading Layout" crap. Completely destroys the proper flow and pagination of every document I've seen with it. Seriously, WTF? Do I have a "Completely Retarded Reading Layout" checkbox turned on somewhere?

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[C0rinthian]

GAYD...

Yeah, you have a point there...

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[smparadox]

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."

In my office the official procedure we are supposed to follow for screen prints is to use the "Print Scrn" button to copy the screen image to the clipboard and then paste it to a Word document.


In. Order. To. Print. It.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Pollardito]

i actually missed the ability to sort on multiple columns more than charts and graphs, have they added that feature yet? it'd also be nice to be able to insert columns or rows faster than one-per-minute

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Hawkxor]

if you want those functions, learning VBA is the next step.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[dk-software-engineer]

Haha, I have easier ways. For some of us, for some tasks anyway, shellscripts are easier.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[kkovach]

Glasses are hot. Broaches are for grandmothers, and while they do exist, there are very few hot grandmothers.

So, I'll go with glasses.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with that? In older, text-based systems, "Print scr" would actually print what was on the (text-based) screen. Modern systems don't do that, so it's only reasonable to open an app (which has a built-in printing command, something that the Windows system shell doesn't). I use Paint for that, though.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[-kertrats-]

CVS?

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Richy_T]

OMG, exponential

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[TheRaven64]

You know Windows has a clipboard viewer, right? And that it has a print command?

Actually, the Windows clipboard has a load of neat features that are almost never used, including network-awareness.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no, I didn't know it has a print command. I never used it anyway, but maybe knowing this I'll use it when I have to make screen dumps. Thanks!

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[orasio]

msoffice doesn't produce PDF.
That's my showstopper right there.
I really need to share documents, in the rare ocasion I produce them. Publishing to a website is something I do. Printing is the other thing.
And no, I don't have the power to force other people to install the same software I run. I wouldn't force them if I could, either.
And I need them to look exactly how I made them.
And I would like the process to be easy.

Aside from that, for my job, I like OOffice csv import/export features, it lets you use Unicode, UTF8, Latin-1. I never got around to understanding how this all works in msexcel. I did try, through a lot of years, but they won, I lost, I had to use oocalc.

I am just finishing my university title in computer engineering, but in all these years (loooong years, in my country people work while going to the university and it takes forever for most of us) I had to produce lots of math equations. I didn't get to learn latex, that could have been a good alternative, but the math editor in OpenOffice is a great improvement over the cumbersome ms equation editor. I used to spend a full night (8+ hours) transcribing two pages of handwritten equations to msword, in the old days. Right now, oomath is a breeze to use, because I could learn it by pointing and clicking, but for the second time I could just type and copy-paste my equations in addition to that. In this specific area, the speedup was at least 10-fold, even if it's a narrow sample.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[gkhan1]

I've never done math, so I can't comment on that but Word 2007 exports to PDF just fine. Three clicks and yer done!

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[meatspray]

Pages in 2000 render realatively nicely in 2003. (no, not identically) It appears pages in 2003 render nicely in 2007. A resume in office 97 may not be right on, but It'll still be readable in 2007. I've had 2 page 2003 based resume's printing out double spaced across 8 paqes in OOv2. I run Linux on the desktop at work and I can say from experience, the cross platform word doc formatting stinks.

I rarely deal with any companies out there running more than one version behind on office. They stay current because they want things to display appropriately to their business partners.
As soon as 2007 starts shipping with Dell, we'll no doubt pick it up and users will start a campaign to get 2003 upgraded.

I'm not saying it's not a M$ racket. I'm just saying the latest version of OO should render to a very close degree of the latest release of the product that's used by 85% of the market. (If they want to procure a chance of taking over the market) You can say "well Microsoft doesn't do it", but they don't have to. That's one of thier ways to get people to upgrade. If OO intends to catch up or take over, they're going to need to play really nice with the current office rev.

Bottom line is that I can't integrate OO at a workplace that has people on anything newer than 10 yr old MS Office applications. That's bad for OO.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[meatspray]

Yeah, M$ is still proprietary, Eventally that will hopefully be their undoing.

The page rendering isn't going to be easy. Matter of fact I'm fairly certain it's going to suck profusely. I wouldn't even be suprised if M$ sabotaged the formats just so that is the case.

But OO needs to unseat them. (Or at least Google) And it's not going to happen until one business can use it's product to communicate documents and presentations without somone on the other side cleaning up the output.

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.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[Brickwall]

Intrigued by your post, I opened Windows Help and entered "windows clipboard". Not one article that described the feature, how to use it, or even how to access it. Small wonder it doesn't get used.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[geminidomino]

I'm not sure that's a downfall of openoffice as opposed to people wanting the wrong things from it.

You'd be lucky to get your document to look "identical" between two versions of MS Word. If you need your document to look the same regardless of platform, that's (ostensibly) what PDF was invented for.

Re:Google Spreadsheet

[dabraun]

If all you have is a hammer ...

My brother made construction blueprints for an addition to his house using powerpoint.

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.

What about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source Google apps? If Google is so "Good" and "opposed to evil", then why is it years after their big debut, Richard Stallman still isn't running a full Google/GNU/Linux desktop??

demand?

[legoburner]

How much demand will there really be from corporate users? I would assume that most would be nervous about this sort of application environment due to the failure of ASPs (application service providers) to take off a few years ago, and see a lot of similarities between ASPs and what google and others are offering, the only main difference being that it is google and not some startup. Are the companies that would be interested in this already nervous from being burned by ASPs. Obviously there are many ASPs that are successful, but they tend to be more specialised than the generic offerings from google and yahoo et al. fwiw; here are some of the risks from wikipedia's ASP page:
* Loss of control of corporate data
* Loss of control of corporate image
* Insufficient ASP security to counter risks
* Exposure of corporate data to other ASP customers
* Compromise of corporate data

Re:demand?

[aussie_a]

A lot of those fears could simply be allayed by Google offering a downloadable, easy to install program that placed all of the necessary code on the server of their choice (ala Google Desktop). However they don't appear willing to go down this route (as they could have with Google Desktop), I imagine because it would cut into their revenue far too much.

Re:demand?

[aussie_a]

And I just provided Google Desktop for two conflictory things. What I meant was that Google Desktop does run locally, unless you use advanced features. However even those advanced features wouldn't need Google's help if they released the necessary code.

Perhaps next time I'll use Preview.

Re:demand?

[cubicledrone]

How much demand will there really be from corporate users?

None, it's a complete waste of time and money.

Oh, wait, you expected someone to be able to predict the future with perfect accuracy, right? Something like what the egg-salad-stuffing asswedges in the conference rooms of our great free enterprises want on a daily basis so they have something to wave in the air and screech "it wasn't MY fault" when they fuck up?

I would assume that most would be nervous

Sphincters tighten at every overrated corporate desk when the fucks who ram thick wads of cash into their pockets by the hour are called upon to actually make a decision or do something remotely related to management.

So they instruct everyone to say they are in a meeting and hide under their hairpieces like the sniveling little weasel fucks they are, all the while trying to get everyone to think they are true starch-pressed captains of industry because they drive a car with leather seats.

What they should do in exchange for everyone else's paycheck is MAKE A FUCKING DECISION AND STAND BY IT.

But they won't. They'll just reverse-clusterfuck everything they touch and fire people to make up for the money they waste.

Re:demand?

[4solarisinfo]

Speaking of tight Sphincters -

Get out much? Geez, lighten up some. Just because you hate your company doesn't mean EVERYONE is fucked up or that they're all useless. I totally forgot what the subject of this thread was you're so wound up...

Re:demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're exactly right. My business will never consider any such thing unless Google can meet the following expectations:

* Contractual terms protecting private data. My corporation's data belongs to my corporation. Any request for any information, whether purely statistical or detailed, from any party, including the federal government, must be processed by my corporation, not Google.

* The ability to export all data in an open format, such as ODF. Without this ability, this scheme will entrap users just like any other proprietary format does.

If Google can get this right, they can own this market lock stock and barrel. If they play this game too tight to the vest, they'll get what they deserve, which is a pittance and a pity.

Re:demand?

[DSW-128]

I take it you didn't get that promotion?

Re:demand?

[cubicledrone]

I take it you didn't get that promotion?

Most of the places I worked had persistent 50 MPH winds caused by the brown clogged rivers of bullshit thundering up and down the halls. People were fired so fast they didn't have time to fill out their parking sticker cards. I remember one fuck said something about a promotion once. He was holding the door open with one foot and scrabbling loose change out of his pen drawer like a starving hound before his department was toilet-rammed. This was about a week before they were going to ship a project about 100 people had been working on for a year. The project went with the department into the shitpipe at about Mach 3. All the hairpieces got bonuses. Oh yeah. Salad with croutons.

Re:demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's a "no"?

Re:demand?

[rmerrill11]

Parent says: How much demand will there really be from corporate users? I would assume that most would be nervous about this sort of application environment due to the failure of ASPs (application service providers) ... here are some of the risks....:
* Loss of control of corporate data
* Loss of control of corporate image
* Insufficient ASP security to counter risks
* Exposure of corporate data to other ASP customers
* Compromise of corporate data

Hmm... I guess Google has not thought of that!

But wait, perhaps they might load the Google apps into something like this... and then all of these issues would go away.

They might even call it something like the "Google OneBox", as it would do Search and "Other Stuff" (tm).

But no, that would be silly.

Re:demand?

[asuffield]

How much demand will there really be from corporate users?

In my observation, demand for applications like this is high with executives (who like shiny toys but never do any actual work with them), while the peons who would actually be using the system all go 'meh' and carry on using telephones for all their intra-office communication needs. Shared calendars are managed by secretaries via the simple method of talking to each other.

Sure, there's always a few places where stuff like this gets used, and in any large organisation there's always a few people who use them. That group is roughly equivalent to the group that reads slashdot. But most of the workforce just doesn't give a damn and ignores the thing.

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:demand?

[duffbeer703]

Better yet... a Google Office Applicance that gets stored in my datacenter/office!

Re:demand?

[AeroIllini]

How much demand will there really be from corporate users?

Corporate users? Almost none. The large corporations are far more comfortable with the already-entrenched MS Office Suite, with their own dataservers and networks, run by their own IT staff, or a third party contracted IT company.

The niche where this would be truly useful is the small companies; the LLCs with 1-10 employees, for whom buying an MS Office suite is prohibitively expensive, and who don't have any IT personnel or central servers. They can create their documents and spreadsheets, share them amongst the employees, and publish them to a server for storage with no hassle. Google takes the brunt of the IT infrastructure costs, giving reliable servers, slick applications, and sharing features for the cost of a few text ads. I can see many small companies, mine included, getting on board with this idea.

For the slightly larger companies who are still too small to have a serious IT infrastructure, I can see Google renting out Office Appliances similar to their Search Appliances. Google delivers it, you just plug it into your network, and voila! it's autoconfigured to provide office apps and storage space inside your firewall. This would get even more companies on board, because their documents could be stored on a physical disk they control, instead of out on The Big Bad Internet. Google could advertise and promise secure storage and access until they're blue in the face, but for many companies data isn't "secure" until it's behind their own firewall (as much as such things can be secured).

Google is filling a need for a customer base that Microsoft has long since abandoned. As a member of that customer base, I applaud their efforts.

Re:demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

That provides neither of the OP's desired guarantees.

Google Releasing an Office Suite ??

[raffe]

This has nothing to do with the Office Suite!
They want to compete with .mac and live.com and then let companies use this and kill exchange. THEN they will move on to the office suite.

Re: Google Releasing an Office Suite ??

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are the first comment posted on this story that actually refers to it.

This is all about Exchange, and nothing at all about Office. But Google has been rumored to be preparing to launch an office suite, so this title is sure to turn more heads.

I guess I shouldn't expect so much, that people would actually read the article and decide for themselves if it is related or not.

It's not for corporate users

[Colin Smith]

It's for small businesses.

This is inevitable btw, as the cost of bandwidth drops and support costs remain relatively constant.

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:My main concern...

[LiquidCoooled]

I don't know about that.
I just installed Office 2003 the other week (i had to "upgrade" to full outlook) and it runs like shit on my athlon 64
I see pages refreshing and lag all around (clicking a folder keeps the mail list from the first folder for just under a second), so much so that I keep remarking its like an online app.
Its coming to something when their flagship program cannot compete with Outlook Express for speed.

Re:My main concern...

[bangenge]

disclaimer: i haven't tried the google spreadsheet app yet but here goes...

have you tried the new yahoo mail beta? the new interface? now THAT is slow. i've been doing websites since 1998 (back when a guestbook would really be state-of-the-art programming) and there's still a lot of room for improvement. i don't think it's the bandwidth since loading the page with all the graphics doesn't take that long, but rather the lag times between the server and client. don't get me wrong, i really see these apps filling in a niche market where budget constraints are a major part of the equation. but not as a full fledged office suite with all the bells and whistles.

with that said, with your claim that outlook is slow as molasses, you might wanna compare what outlook can do compared with the express version, and with what gmail/yahoo mail (beta) can offer.

*update: while typing this comment, i just had to find out for myself what the google spreadsheet can and can't do... and while it's not up to par with excel, given that it installs 0 bytes on your pc and costs 0$, you get much more than what you pay for.

Re:My main concern...

[jbarr]

Speed is not the only criteria to judge usability. The HUGE advantage of Google's apps (or any online app for that matter) is their availability wherever you have a Web connection. This makes standalone versions unnecessary. Of course, it's also its biggest fault: If you are offline, you have no access to your data. So I think the most useful design would be to provide full online access with standalone, offline "companion" versions that would either completely or selectively sync online data, providing full usability while offline. And to me, the importent component of this is to make the standalone applications truely standalone and portable--No Java, no Registery writing, no writing in your Documents and Settings directory. Take a clue from the Portable Apps world, and you'll have an excellent solution.

Define serious. 90% of businesses are tiny.

[Colin Smith]

One or two person companies. For them this is perfect. Microsoft have long since forgotten about this crowd as they focused more and more on the corporate customer.

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

[babbling]

I still think one or two person companies would be far more interested in something like OpenOffice. I think Google Spreadsheets might have a niche market for personal users, though.

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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, very few accountants are willing to work with anything but Excel.

REAL accountants like 1-2-3, not Excel.

Re:Ballmer

[bangenge]

this is bad news for the environment. why can't those environmentalist groups target MS?

Google Calendar

[ewisnor]

I knew they'd come out with this sooner or later, but I didn't see it coming so soon I guess. For the last couple of months I've been working on my own calendar program with a goal in mind of having it widely used, and I've been praying that Google would overlook the idea of an online calendar. As a small time guy with an idea and decent knowledge of programming, should I be worried and slow down on my development, or press on and put the same amount of effort and resources into it that I have been? It's likely that this would take me a couple years to have it worthy of showing the public, but do you think someone like me has a shot at competing against the big G? -Evan

Re:Google Calendar

[warith]

No kidding... is MS going to figure out how to, I dunno, INDEX the mail properly for fast searching?

When I can search thousands of GMail messages instantly, and then it takes Outlook a minute or two to search fucking TEXT on my LOCAL HARD DISK, you know there's a problem.

Re:Google Calendar

[adolf]

Suppose for a second that we're actually USING the calendar as a way to track and schedule appointments and meetings and other daily activities.

Now suppose that the Intar-web is borken, and Google can't be reached. Suddenly, I can't tell my ass from a hole in the ground - I've got no idea where I'm supposed to be, or who's coming to see me. I can't schedule anything new, and I can't take care of anything already scheduled. (I could avoid this problem by keeping a redundant schedule/calender, but if I wanted to jot things down twice I'd just DO SO, on paper, and be done with entrusting these computers with important things.)

Meanwhile, Outlook still works, and the same information is still in my Palm from the last time they sync'd, in case the computer catches fire, and backed up remotely semi-nightly in case they both go tits up together.

As much as I'd like to, I can't put all of my eggs in Google's basket. Without some sort of local, redundant copy of the data, there's no way I'm going to do anything important with it.

Most people aren't interested in computers

[Colin Smith]

Getting, installing, fixing, securing, upgrading. Not interested.

It's like me and my car, couldn't care less as long as it gets me from A to B. If public transport could get me pretty much from A to B as well as the car I'd happily ditch it. Same's true of computers, if they can get rid of all the IT bollocks, they will, happily.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[babbling]

I'd have thought that an online spreadsheet application would involve far less "IT bollocks", but I acknowledge that it could appear to be easier if you ignore all the things that could go wrong with it.

Google's server could go down, the company's internet access could go down, someone could attempt to brute-force their way into the account, and so on...

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[aussie_a]

Well as long as you aren't too interested in securing then Google Spreadsheets is the place for you.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[Erectile Dysfunction]

Do you use Google Spreadsheets for anything yourself?

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[Colin Smith]

"Google's server could go down, the company's internet access could go down, someone could attempt to brute-force their way into the account, and so on..."

The local hard disk could crash, they could get a virus, be attacked by script kiddies, a local switch could fail, the laptop could be dropped etc. Remote systems are no more risk than local ones. With remote systems you usually have competent admins, mirrored storage, secure connections, highly available networks etc. The risks are just a little different.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[Colin Smith]

Sure for basic stuff, it isn't terribly advanced. I also use google calendars.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[aplusjimages]

I likes the Google Calendar as well. Very useful. I also use Google Notebook a lot. The spreadsheet I'm still kind of trying to find a use for it in my daily life.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's a bit of a red herring. In all those cases, you'll lose not only your local apps., but access to Google Office as well. With an online solution, your risk is multiplied. Not only do you risk all sorts of network issues, but you do nothing to mitigate any kind of local issues.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[NotBorg]

Google's server could go down[...]

Yeah they really should build some redundancy in to Google's "server". With only one of them I'd hate to lose my Gmail account---I have a lot of spam free messages there.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[Dorceon]

If the hard drive with the important document on it crashes, you're hosed. If the hard drive of the computer you use to connect to google to edit the important document crashes, stick another one in there and go.

Re:Most people aren't interested in computers

[pigeonAteHe]

The difference being that with one you control the risk, with the other you delegate it.

GoogleOffice without PowerPoint?

[arachnoprobe]

Impossible to implement in a business world! How could you even dream of a really nice slide http://presentationzen.blogs.com/.shared/image.htm l?/photos/uncategorized/complexity_bill.jpg without PowerPimp?

data mine your office documents

[Anonymous Coward]

They mine the data out of your searches(google), your email(gmail), your computer(google desktop), your web surfing habits (google web accelerator), where you are going(google maps), what languages you speak (google language translator), what you buy(froogle), what you read(books).
What the hell, let them mine your business documents as well....

Users

[ms1234]

I don't think corporate users are the main target at the moment for Google (nor will they ever be I think). I think it is the home users who do not want to fork up for $$$ or for an office suite. Google has always targeted the small users which there are more of than corporate users and which in the long run will bring in more money than then corporate users.

Re:Users

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is basically just an advertising firm. They want you to use their software as much as possible, during which they can advertise things to you.

For that reason, it would be in Google's best interest to get the larger companies using their software. Although big businesses make up less than 10% of all businesses, I would assume that the number of employees working for these companies is much higher than 10%. Plus, these are the employees that use email to communicate with each other all day every day, and write up reports all day every day, and must keep their calendar on lockdown all day every day.

If small business users only use google 1 hour a day, but an employee at a large company uses it for 4 hours, that one big company employee is 4x more profitable to google than the employee of the smaller company.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Check out MICROSOFT's wrongdoing

[applix7]

Google's main rival is quite the evil company... http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/malfy.html

No spreadsheet or word processor: not office suite

[rickkas7]

If you look at Google's page for Apps for your Domain there's no mention at all about the spreadsheet or word processor. This announcement is just gmail + calendar + IM + web page creator, which is nothing like an office suite at all.

When is an office suite not an office suite

[niceone]

• No word processor. Check.
• No spreadsheet. Check.
• No presentation tool. Check.

Seriously - how is this "Google Releasing an office suite"?

Re:When is an office suite not an office suite

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google began selling dog shit the resulting artilce on Slahdot would be titled "Google Sells Web Based Fertilizer". In the eyes of many in the Slashdot crowd Google can do no wrong and everything that Google sells is gold. This product will fail. Google should stick to what it does best, search. If they try to branch out in to many directios instead of focusing on what they do best, they'll end up like Microsoft. One giant, bloated mess of a company that consistently over promises and under delivers.

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

[kurtis25]

I create reports for my job and I'm not sure if I've ever used excel to create a chart. I've created charts generally in Word as part of a report or in outlook and ever more in PowerPoint but rarely if even in excel. (Yes I know it all uses and builds on the shell game that is excel). A chart in Excel does me and others little good. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw chart capability in google spreadsheet built into other parts of google (pages, blogger, writely,) they clearly have the capability to make charts (ad sense analytics and the like) so it wouldn't be much of a jump for cross platform chart integration. p.s. google sheets is to slow to use so charts aside it is useless.

Well...

[Captain Murdock]

I'd like my documents securely on my hard drive and completely under my control. I see no reason to let Google store them for me.

Re:Well...

[wild_berry]

They're not offering that to businesses yet. This is Slashdot, where the headline has nothing to do with the linked article and your post need not acknowledge either. Reader 'niceone' points out that the Google Apps for Your Domain doesn't contain a word processor, spreadsheet or presentation tool. It has GMail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Page Creator, which appear to me to be groupware stuff, not personal productivity stuff. They aren't asking to take your files off your network or even away from your computer.

Re:Well...

[Captain Murdock]

This is indeed slashdot, meaning I didn't read the article... :)

SOHO and private firms

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

This is only oriented towards private firms and not publicly traded firms that have to deal with the nightmare that is Sarbanes Oxley. Public firms have to retain data for some time, sysadmins have to document reboots of servers....

Re:SOHO and private firms

[Kefaa]

I agree, but I also suspect it will be a difficult sell to them too. If Google were to have an "accidental" release of data, you - as the personal responsible for protecting it, are hosed. While it is possible that data can leak from anywhere, the chances that it will come off my network are a lot less than Google. People are not trying to directly hack me every day - just to make a name for themselves (and critical data is not on a internet accessible machine).

Further, when I shred a document - I know it is gone. Google will keep it for eternity - like it or not. Then when the government requests the records and my lawyer would have stopped them, Google will turn it over to them without telling me.

This is home use only and even then, I recommend openoffice over this option. Anyone trusting security to an ISP or web site are going to lose eventually.

Re:SOHO and private firms

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Agreed but I still see a lot of Windows Server Small Business installs losing out to this. Which of course, is just fine :)

Scam for Google to take over your domain?!?

[stry_cat]

I followed the link the summary and attempted to sign up for the service. However it wants me to change my MX and CNAME records so that basically google will handle everything for my domain. I most certainly don't want that. I just want to be able to use the office suite and have my other volunteers be able to use it. Am I missing something???

Re:Scam for Google to take over your domain?!?

[truthsearch]

And as they say there's no software to install. They host it for you. So how else are they supposed to host your email and web content on your own domain if you don't change your MX and CNAME records?

Tried both ms office live and Google App

[shantanu.singh]

I have tried both ms office live and google app service. Frankly I tried to upload a excel sheet containing 20K+records (size around 400kb), google simply failed. Google website template are really bad however gmail give better User experience than window live mail. Microsoft give free domain (for example my domain enterprisemobilityindia.org) while google ask you to setup your domain (example www.fanclubindia.com). My concern on both cases, I shall have to be bounded by either microsoft or google. Today they may not be charging but you cannot be sure about this in future. I can get cheap root server and lots of opensource software to run my server. I think it is not prudent to go either google way or microsoft way!

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.

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.)

Re:Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[VertigoAce]

It appears that Microsoft agrees hiding unused menu items was a poor way of solving the UI problem. If you haven't seen Office 2007 yet, you should take a look at its UI.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ui/overvie w.mspx

It's essentially very toolbar oriented, but organizes them based on the task they are associated with (page layout, document reviewing, etc.).

Re:Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[It'sYerMam]

I was aware that the hiding had been ceased, and I also managed to turn it off in my copy, so no big deal there. For the moment, I rarely need a powerful wordprocessor, and openoffice, if not abiword, is fine.

Re:Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[Blink Tag]

Wnat yur spreadsheet to look up stuff ...

So long as it has spell check, I'll be fine.

Re:Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[Keybounce]

This is an improved UI?

3 rows of menubars and tabs taking up valuable vertical space.

More things NOT ON the menus == more things that cannot be keyboarded. Forced mousing == forced slowdown.

A brand new set of non-standard window frame and menu bar, so any sort of helper program (screen readers, etc) will be confused.

Yet another case of "No other program has these features" advertising claim, with the truth being that microsoft has abandoned -- AGAIN -- the standard UI routines that they feel are good enough for the rest of us. This leads to

Dozens and dozens of slightly different UI looks re-implemented in every program, slightly different, because no one wants to use the boring standard. Even though years and years ago, microsoft assured everyone that by using these standard routines, any improvements/enhancements would automatically be available to your programs, and they would never go out of date (cough cough twiddle filenames cough cough)

Heck, even the file menu is gone. Talk about "How do I save/load?".

All in all, it seems to be that microsoft is run by people with ADD/ADHD -- Make it different, make it colorful, we have no attention span, make it visually loud so people see us. Take a look at those sample reformatting images -- every one does something to try to say "See Me!", something to try to stand out. Yet when EVERYTHING is going to have the same "standout", the same "Look at me!", it will all just get ignored.

GAAAAA.

Can we please get some consistency from microsoft?

Oh, wait, I feel like the genie. 2 lanes or 4?

Re:Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[TheRaven64]

Why would you have the user select them? Just load them as they are required. Log the most used ones for each user and have it asynchronously fetch these when they load a document (remember what the first A in AJAX stands for?).

Re:Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[hepwori]

3 rows of menubars and tabs taking up valuable vertical space.

And yet, magically, Word 2007 uses only 135 vertical pixels for UI versus Word 2003's 140.

More things NOT ON the menus == more things that cannot be keyboarded

I suggest you inform yourself about what is being discussed. I don't think you know what you think you know.

Re:Adding functionality wil be easy ...

[tomhudson]

I was going to post that as a follow-up, but my bagel had already gotten my fingers too slippery (I tend to load them up with butter and cream cheese when I toast them).

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.

Maybe not now

[tontammer]

Maybe Google's office suite is not attractive enough now, but past experiences tell us they will improve it up to the point as to give the others a good ride for their money..

It's the collaboration

[Kadin2048]

I think the market for Google Spreadsheet isn't in a direct replacement of an offline, desktop spreadsheeting program, but as part of a more collaborative workflow.

Honestly I don't think Google is aiming to replace Excel, per se. MS has too long a head start, and frankly they'd just be putting themselves in the position of playing catch-up, forever. (Kinda like WINE; people that want to find some reason not to like it, are always going to find one.)

Rather than just looking at G-Spreadsheet as "Excel...but free!" it seems better to look at what it can offer that Excel can't. Particularly since being 'free' isn't that compelling a feature, given that most companies see Microsoft Office as a sunk cost -- just part of the overhead of owning a computer. The killer feature of Google Spreadsheet is sharing.

A little ways up in the thread somebody was discussing a problem (that is very common) where you might send a bunch of people a very simple spreadsheet, in his example it was a class grading sheet. Each of them work on it and send it back to you. When you get it back, you have a mess -- how do you combine the changes back into one document? There's really not any good way to do it. The best thing you can do is to have a rigid document-management workflow, where only one person at a time can have the "working copy" of a document, and then they pass it around. (Storing it on a fileserver basically does this, but necessitates a fileserver and also brings in additional problems.)

There's definitely a market for something that allows for a lot more collaboration than the MS Office suite either allows or is designed for. Google, if they're smart (and I have every reason to think that they are) is probably looking to do more than just "reinvent the wheel...online." Or at least, if they're going to reinvent the wheel, they know that their wheel has to have some compelling features that will make people switch. In this case, I don't think that the feature is going to be the fact that it's free, it's going to be the ability to share and collaborate without worrying about CMSes, file sharing, Citrix, or any of the other hacks which people basically use in order to make single-user desktop apps more collaborative.

In the same way that someone once joked that IRC is "multiplayer Notepad," G-Cal might begin as "multiplayer Excel," but end up looking like something totally different from what it would be like, without the interactive/collaborative ability.

Re:It's the collaboration

[gmuslera]

Several of the latest google products have "collaboration" as one of their strong points (not only the spreadsheet, the er... "wordprocessor" too, and of course the calendar that is already considered), I wonder when they will add those services to the "for your domain" tools collection, or at least if they will have shortcuts to quickly add the domain you belong (if managed there) to the people enabled to view/edit/whatever your work.

Why Google SpreadSheets Will Become Popular...

[flight_master]

If Google decides to open up and the spreadsheet application, so that it can be installed on corporate networks, I can see it taking quite a bit of market share from MS. It would allow for full colaboration, instantly - instead of E-mailing the same file around a hundred times.


Of course, it would need a *few* more features.

Re:Why Google SpreadSheets Will Become Popular...

[I'm Don Giovanni]

You really think that MS doesn't provide the ability for document collaboration over corporate networks?

Re:demand - Google Apps for Education

[nursegirl]

At the end of the FAQ page there's a section with information for people using Google Apps for Education. High schools (and perhaps even colleges) would benefit from being able to offload these sorts of IT needs onto Google, therefore allowing their meager IT staffing to focus on education-specific IT infrastructure requirements.

Also, the SOHO and non-profit fields would really benefit as well. The more of these basic things we offload, the more we can focus our energies on our actual fields. If we were starting our non-profit from scratch, I would definitely be encouraging us to use this. Even still, once they release the ad-free version, I'm going to be comparing it to what we're currently paying for our webhosting. If it's the same or cheaper, then I'm going to be proposing a switch. Gmail is much better than our current email offering, and a shared calendar service would make many lives easier.

how is this new?

[boredandblogging.com]

If anyone used google's hosted email service, they already get all this. Its not new.

Alt. to MS office? no. its better.

[kemo_by_the_kilo]

everyone said they were going to make an Office clone/compet. but they didnt do that the did one better. free office paid support.
IMO After Vistas release watch how quickly MS will start to adopt the open source policy of free code, expensive support.

This is all well and good, but...

[hacker]

Does it work on the airplane? The train? The bus?

These new Internet applications are great as a demo of what can be done, but they're not really useful in the larger scheme of things, ESPECIALLY in corporate or business environments.

In many of the corporations I've been in, getting outbound port 80 access from various departments is restricted (for good reason), as are IM ports and other things. You don't want to be putting company financials out on some website's spreadsheet, do you?

What routers are you going through?

Who else can see that information?

Is there a caching proxy upstream that you don't know about?

What happens when the network goes down?

Too risky, and it only works where there's an Internet connection, which (contrary to public belief) is not ubiquitous these days.

Re:This is all well and good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

These are good points. I think a lot of the people here who are getting excited about this are not people who work for large corporations. Where I work (a large IT services provider, Fortune 500) there are very strict rules about protecting company information, and I can guarantee that there is no way that using a web-based office suite on the public internet will be allowed. Even an internal system on the company's intranet would run up against some serious obstacles (e.g. export compliance rules). It just ain't gonna happen.

And I think the point about internet connectivity is important. Not everyone has a laptop with wi-fi and can get a connection at some internet cafe. I think this will probably be more useful to home users and people in academia.

Re:This is all well and good, but...

[alucinor]

Firefox 3 will support an offline mode for web apps.

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:If I were planning an office tools entry

[DragonWriter]

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

Don't they already have Page Creator? How much difference in there between a "presentation" and a web site designed to viewed fullscreen and with a defined sequence of pages?

Google... what more...

[kasgoku]

Google has been expanding rapidly, and what's more interesting is that google does not publicly give out information about some of its services and how they are implemented. So, there is a secret side of google as well. Oh well it makes surprises more interesting.

Next thing you know... you will be drinking Google Bottled Water from the Fresh Lakes of California, i mean come... on.

Google is doing it the right way.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It introduced gmail. Ramped it up to serve millions of users. Long back when I checked netcraft's tool bar, gmail.com had a site rank of 20, when mail.yahoo.com was at 60. (Dont have recent numbers, sorry). They hammered it till they understand the bugs and all the issues. Then they are rolling out a product to do email. Outlook, its address book, calender integration are extremely important to millions of MS users and one of the main pillars of the vendor lock. Though the product is intended for paid corporate customers, they are rolling it out as an ad supported "free" service to lure in beta testers. Many /.ers mention the need for corporations to have complete control over their data. I am sure Google knows that issue and eventually when it rolls out paid service, it will done with boxes owned and operated by the corporations themselves.

By the same token, Google will not introduce Writely as paid service to corporations till the service is really ready. All Google has to do is to show the corporations that the browser is a platform powerful enough to do email, calender, word processing and spread sheets. That would be enough to give the corporations a pause. When MS comes around dunning for a round of money to upgrade all apps to Vista and force the entire company to upgrade, they will think twice before automatically signing whatever contract MS is pushing. Along with it if, corporations follow the Massassuchetts (sp?) example and migrate to a portable open documents standards, there is some real possibility for competition to return to computers arena. That would be a good thing. If it just degenerates from a monopoly to a duopoly, it would be bad.

Hope Google really means it when it says, "First, do no evil".

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

[tzanger]

A chart in Excel does me and others little good.

Funny, I use charting in Excel more than I use any other feature in the entire Office suite. I regularly import csv data to graph easily. Packet jitter. CPU/VM/IO load. Process variables read in over a serial port from some proprietary equipment. I haven't found something smaller and lighter that allows me to do this as quickly and easily as dumping to CSV and importing into Excel to graph. gnuplot is a contender, but it's just not as fast for me to use it yet.

Other contenders

[gregarican]

This seems to be a promising area. The collaborative and distributed basis of the Internet makes good for companies spread out and mobile employees. Has anyone had a time to check out a service called Dabble DB? This is more of a database web app, but really is just a step up from a tweaked-out online spreadsheet. I have a 30 day test drive going using it and so far it seems to be a good resource for sure.

Spreadsheets are shee-it

[gelfling]

200 slide Powerpoints is where it's at. Remember kiddies, management survival and promotion is about who has the highest tolerance for mind numbing boredom.

Not so usable...

[Snaller]

...if you have to disable stylesheets in general, because most sites are badly designed.

hand in hand with Firefox enhancements

[alucinor]

It seems the development of this "office" suite goes hand in hand with new enhancements being made to Firefox -- especially a more robust Javascript (2.0) and the ability to have an offline mode for your apps as well as an open API to the local SQLLite storage engine.

Re:hand in hand with Firefox enhancements

[growse]

Google will buy Firefox!!!!

Seriously, which is the better scenario:

Competing with one huge dominating company by using lots of little small companies to eat away at various markets it's in (as we have today with firefox, oo.org, google all nibbling at the markets that ms is in) OR Competing with one huge dominating company by getting one medium-sized company (google) to buy all the company's around it and essentially have a two-player marketplace.

I'm not actually sure which I'd prefer. The second model seems to be working in the CPU market, but that's not exactly comparing like with like. Hmmmm....

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/)

has anyone tried Zoho

[shakuni]

We ( a bunch of friends) are using Zoho Virtual Office for our own aspiring start up. It works really well from a functionality perspective. I must say it is buggy software but has enough in it for us to get started without a dime and if it improves I will surely pay for it when and if we grow. they have other products as well that are in the ASP model. Virtual office is web based tool that you have to download and run on your server.

So there are a lot of alternatives out there. May the consumer win not matter who wins. www.zoho.com

2 paisa

What they're competing with...

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Maybe they're not competing directly with anything; maybe they're carving out a new space before anyone else does. Face it, the hosted app space is a pretty nascent market as far as large-scale use goes. GMail isn't really directly analogous to any other web-based mail, and in some ways it could legitimately be thought of as its own breed of online app. Windows Live is pretty rushed, pretty rough and not extraordinarily useful, and MS is of course already working the angles on how to monetize it.

I use both Excel and Google Spreadsheets, and I use them for different things. I see both of those solutions being on my most valued tool list for some time. Google seems to approach from the "make it useful first" direction, rather than trying to feature match some competing offering or trying to build the application around the monetization approach. They don't need to build an "Office Killer" or "OOo Killer" for this to be a monster success.

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?

Re:Link to your Statistics ?

[Brickwall]

Maybe it's because I've popped around from industry to industry, but...

When I worked in the financial industry, I used Excel's financial formulae often. When I was running my own business, I used the database functions frequently. Now, working as an analyst, the stat and database formulae are my meat.

I think the strength of Excel - and all M$ bashing aside, it's a pretty good product - is that it supports many different communities of users, and it does so with a standard interface. It's a lot easier to learn how to use a new function than it is to learn a whole new program. Goog is going to have come up with something really special to convince me to change.

B-------d bingo [Re:Google Spreadsheet]

[j.leidner]

...while they decide how to divide the salaries of all the people they're about to fire, she better have some CHARTS AND GRAPHS with her or her presentation won't be entertaining enough.

Why care? They are likely to play BULLS**T Bingo in meeting most of the time...

Of course, but.......

[shaneh0]

Of course the average user only uses 10% of {Excel|Word|VisualStudio|Etc}'s features. The problem, as developers should very well know, is that everyone uses a different 10%.

Re:Of course, but.......

[dk-software-engineer]

I'd guess the average users uses less than 10%. One user may use 1%. Almost all advanced features is problably used by very few, maybe 10-20%.

Incredibly many people uses Excel in a way a table or some tabs in Word could do just as good. "It's like Word with another kind of tabs."

Re:Of course, but.......

[tehcyder]

I'd guess the average users uses less than 10%. One user may use 1%. Almost all advanced features is problably used by very few, maybe 10-20%

I am so fucking 1337 that I actually use 110% because I re-program Excel on the fly when I find it can't do what I want, which is the all the time, because I am so fucking 1337.

Potential

[tontammer]

I feel that google's office suite has huge potential. Collaboration has become an important buzzword these days. People from multiple locations nowadays work on a single project. Also, many people these days cozily work from their homes. Traditional products were not designed with these factors in mind. On the other hand, Google's products are almost always designed considering these factors.

What the hell?

[redog]

Please flame me for this; Why must something be "released" for "enterprise" use? I mean come on guys if we let the marketers and reporters say what is and isn't "enterprise" ready we will end up with the same damn nightmare that is microsoft windows, except in 2 versions an "enterprise(i.e. professional)" version and the home(i.e. easy target) version. Let the "enterprise" IT guys figure it out. Let them be the ones who cry out "This is enterprise ready", "This is approved for enterprise use", "This is useful and not a pain in the butt when it fails", "our employees should use this its a time saver", etc, etc, ad nausiam. And then when it falls short of "enterprise" expectations let them take the heat for making the decision. Unlike "Big Sales Enterprise Inc" they will not be able push, pry, and coerce on a scale that creates so much "brand name" pressure on the mentally retarted(i.e. the general public) to keep the very thing that caused `the problems` to stay alive in their own "enterprise". Currently it seems that the decision makers are way over pressured by marketing, eye litter is everywhere. The number of battles that should be fought with those who want to use product x JUST because it is marketed well is overwhelming. Seems clear to me. Lets call it democratic marketing and get Al Gore on the phone.

P.S. Word of mouth anyone?
P.S.S Experiance maybe?
How do you convince 10 million smart people to become idiots? "Good" Marketing.

Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Nicely expressed.

Never mind the formulas....

[Brunellus]

It doesn't need to be. 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.

Most people are using Excel to present text in tables--totally ignorant of the fact that their word processor would probably be better at doing that job.

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.

Has anyone tried ContactOffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use http://www.contactoffice.com/ since 2001 and they're doing a pretty good job as an online application and data repository (virtual office).

I use google spreadsheet

[CdBee]

I have a s/sheet with my cars entire service history on it which my favourite mechanic can access to check when parts were replaced. All he needs is the net and a browser, and he has both.

Google Search Appliance

[CdBee]

Google already rents out servers that can index local networks. In time I am sure these boxes will optionally have Google productivity apps on them too. Slow on consumer broadband doesn't necessarily mean slow on 100mb ethernet!

Privacy?

[jbwiv]

The ability to use GMail for private domains would be really, really cool. Still, I think the discussions thus far are missing the real meat of the story...do you put your company at risk by letting GMail handle your domain's mail?

We're so happy

[nycroft]

Google Apps for Your Domain is just what I need to get my domain GAYD up for the holidays. In fact, I can put a message down at the bottom saying "This site was GAYD by the use of Google Apps for Your Domain". Wow, it's just so GAYD!

Google Charts (c)

[BlackShirt]

Google already draws nice charts pretty well. :)

http://www.google.com/trends?q=google%2C+microsoft

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=GOOG%2C+MICROS

PS. What I would like to see is special $G$Charts web service that could, well, replace $MS$Powerpoint

Hyped again

[danpsmith]

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.

After all of this talk of an office suite, columns and opinions about whether or not Google is going to ship an office suite, they are calling this an office suite?

Someone tell me how a web email client, a calendar, an instant messager and a HTML application is a full office suite? Then allow me to beat you over the head with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Powerpoint. OpenOffice is an Office suite, this is media hype. But we can't plug OpenOffice in the general media though, because general knowledge that home users are paying hundreds of dollars for something they could just as easily get for free might slow down commerce.

Yawn

[JustNiz]

>> e-mail client (Gmail), shared calendaring environment (Google Calendar), instant messaging client (GTalk) and HTML page generator (Google Page Creator)

*yawn* There are already a million versions of this stuff out there already. why don't they do something original instead of releasing their rehash of the same old crap?

Re:Yawn

[g-san]

Well, show me another email client that can scan your email messages and find dates, then offer to put them on your calendar with one click, or give you driving directions to an address that is in the email message. That can be incredibly handy. It may be the same old thing at the individual app level, but the integration and intelligence is very new. Plus it works with any browser I happen to have handy and it's over a secured connection. I couldn't even get secure email from verizon when they were my ISP, and they were charging me extra for an email account that you know will change when you move next time.

I would love to have the ability to share spreadsheets at work ala Google Spreadsheets, even if they are just task/bug lists without fancy charts, without having to strictly use IE with SharePoint and have it constantly complain that I don't have the right billy g gizmo bob installed to be able to edit a spreadsheet with one click. Siebel has broken with almost every MS update in the last few months. I'm sure my boss wastes a lot of time taking updates from everyone, updating a spreadsheet, then sending it back out. It would be much better if we could just edit the spreadsheet in realtime on a call, and see the changes. But who wants to keep company confidential data on a free public service? If that is where they are going with this with internal appliances/office suites then I am all for it. And no it's not the same as keeping a spreadsheet on a file server.

So wake up!

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would love to have the ability to share spreadsheets at work ala Google Spreadsheets"

There are so many existing options for doing this (free and paid), that I will not bother to write them all down. Seriously, do you need to pump up EVERYTHING google does, including the lame stuff?

Google announces 'Office' software

[solo6]

If it is anything like their 'Desktop' piece of software garbage, Microsoft execs can rest easy following Google's latest new product announcement.

Google Apps for Domain?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who thinks the name sounds like something out of a Seinfeld episode?

Review of Google Apps for Domain

[Anonymous Coward]

I just found this review of Google Apps for your Domain Vs Microsoft Live Domains on digg. It's available here http://convergence.in/blog/archives/153