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Google To Add Presentations
A number of readers (some from the audience at Web 2.0 Expo) wrote to let us know that Google is adding presentations to their Docs and Spreadsheets package. With the announcement the company revealed that they have purchased Tonic Systems to help with the new presentation software. It's expected to be ready by summer. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt was asked if Docs and Spreadsheets will compete with MS Office, and he said, "We don't think so. It doesn't have all the functionality, nor is it intended to have the functionality of products like Microsoft Office."
"We don't think it'll compete with Office - we just want the customer base that uses it"
I'd like to see it use the s5 format - then it could be saved as html+css.
Take a look at the introductory presentation - it's pretty neat especially considering it's all standard html+css+js.
Interestingly, I recently noticed that my school has installed OpenOffice(.org) on all the computers--but the shortcuts only appear on teachers' desktops.
.doc format any more. Just tell them to open it in this "OpenOffice.org thing".
At least I don't have to convert to MS'
Got it in one. Add this to the commercial domain packaging Google is offering and it looks like the platform for a lot of small businesses. $50/user/year and you can throw away all your departmental Microsoft servers. If you get controlled logins, Gmail, Writely, spreadsheet and presentation as well as a portal with your own domain name, why bother with Microsoft? Oh and you can throw away all the operations support structure and those dusty MCSE's as well. That's gotta save you more than $50/user/year, and you get a reliable platform too. I mean, it isn't like Google doesn't have a bit of redundancy here & there.
I'm an old and dusty MCSE/network engineer too and I don't see why a small business needs that kind of infrastructure or expertise any more than you should have a television engineer in your home to switch channels for you.
I was once a Microsoft shill until I discovered my inner Fear of Flying Chairs...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
...And it wouldn't be hard. Just use an existing OSS database as the back-end solution (mySQL, PostgreSQL comes to mind) and then create a front-end that makes it easy for the layperson to set up tables and create queries, forms and reports. Considering the resources Google has at hand, this wouldn't be too difficult and would have a free stable core already available to them.
Similes are like metaphors
WTF!? Computers haven't lagged behind keystrokes in like 15 years (although browser based apps chock full of Javascript aim to change that). What are you running, a Mac Classic or something?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
From what I understand from rumors heard before the departure of Dennis and Alex, formally of Google's Dodgeball, they are tied up in endless meetings and conference calls rather than having the opportunity to work on their project.
I know Google has the public relations dollars, but one would think on Slashdot we'd be discussing
the many (IMHO far better) online office suites. I have a hard time looking at Google Docs
and thinking anyone would find it compares to say "Ajax13" ( http://www.ajax13.com/ ) or other
independent offerings.
Likewise, Google's webtop pales in comparison to far slicker applications like DesktopTwo
( http://www.desktoptwo.com/ ). -- which by the way uses a web based java version of OpenOffice
which is also slicker than any of Google's office apps.
I'm all for "free" and "freely distributed" web applications replacing the MS Office tax that
we're all forced to pay, but I'm also for the best man winning. And IMHO, Google's not exactly
deserving of the top spot here.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The question is, once large organizations figure out (if they are actually interested in saving money let's say) that this one percent phenomena exists, how valuable will it be for them to buy everyone in the organization a $200+ piece of software "just in case" they need it?
The more appropriate response will be for Office to be looked upon in the same way that a compiler is, something that just a few people, specialists, need to have a copy of, while everyone else can make use of much simpler web-based alternatives.
As people start to use "Google Office" at home for its ease of sharing documents, etc, the same argument that made Office a standard will start to apply to Google Apps: "Hey, all these people right out of school already know Google Apps, let's just standardized on that so we don't have to teach them Office".
I don't think I've run MS Office in three years, and my use of Open Office is starting to fall off quite a bit as I just load things people send me into Google Docs from the get-go. I'm also noticing that the only thing I'm storing on my PCs are music files and photos, with more and more photos being stored online as well. This is great!
When I'm editing a 200-page Pages document, I get up to five seconds of lag per keystroke on my G4 Powerbook.
I have used S5 for my presentations for a while now, and mainly for two reasons:
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I almost always have an internet connection (or network connection) and thus can get at any of the presentations I need. I also can let the viewers see the presentation any time they want - just need that browser...
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The ability to have both the printed and presentation form in one simple text document is so nice. Editing, updating, version control, etc. is just so much easier. And with the document being usable by all users, I don't need the "Windows" or "Mac" (and, rarely, the "Linux") compatible presentation system - I just do it all in one place and it just works.
I think Google may have something here. For most presentations (those that don't look like a 1990's MTV spot) this stuff just works. I just hope that they do something similar.1) for the larger companies this is correct. in fact they have a special budget just for this stuff and if they don't spend it they lose it. they are not saving anything at all in larger companies.
2) for small and medium size business this will be a huge savings and *that* is the purpose of GOffice.
Targetting corporations is pointless. They have to run all email and software inside their walls and they sometimes won't even allow you to use something like gmail while at work. Small and medium size businesses don't have that kind of infrastructure and bureaucracy yet and will benefit greatly from this type of online office suite.
I disagree. The cost of software for a company includes the cost of licensing, license management, maintenance, file transfer, the potential cost of license noncompliance, and support. Google docs mitigates more than just the flat license cost. These savings may not be considered significant and inefficient bureaucracies in large, american companies will probably resist the change for a long time, but that is not the same thing as the cost itself being nothing.
Now consider smaller companies that don't have well established license management schemes. The cost becomes more significant. Now subtract from the per seat cost a Windows license, which is no longer needed because Google docs runs fine on Linux. Now consider foreign companies that spend a fraction of the cost on labor and who may or may not be complying with the law, but many of whom are being pressured to do so. Does Google docs support chinese?
So far we're looking at a bunch of online toys trying to pretend they're Office.Actually, they serve a different purposes. I use a google doc spreadsheet to track a competition I'm participating in along with a few friends. They all use it as well because while we only need basic spreadsheet capabilities, we do need the ability to collaborate easily and with Google docs that is much, much, much easier than setting up some sort of a server with versioning that we can all access. Google docs is for casual, home use and for collaborative use. That is how it is different from MS Office, which I think everyone in the competition has access to, but which does not allow easy ad hoc collaboration from different people in different companies.
Third, if a company is desperate to save from licensing costs, they can use OpenOffice. As much as OpenOffice lacks certain functionality, it's a desktop app, and ages ahead of Google's apps.I'm all for OpenOffice, although it sucks pretty badly on the mac right now. What you might be missing is that this is not an either/or proposition. Google docs supports ODF so you can write something in OpenOffice and upload it to Google docs, or collaborate on something in Google docs with a bunch of friends, then download it an modify it in OpenOffice. Google docs targets a different segment. It is easier to e-mail a link to a Google docs file to my mother and let her edit it, than it is to e-mail her an OpenOffice created ODF file and instruct her in how to open it, save, it and attach it to another e-mail to send it back to me, even assuming I've installed OpenOffice on her machine in the past (which would run like a dog on her ancient 500Mhz box).