Google Apps Slow to Replace Competition

ericatcw brings us a Computerworld article about how businesses are still hesitant to switch to Google Apps as an alternative to Microsoft Office. While a Google spokesman claims "millions of active users", only "several thousand organizations" have paid for the Premier service, which was launched earlier this year. From Computerworld: "'If we deploy it correctly, Google Docs can replace some [of] our Office apps -- but not all of them,' said Les Sease, IT director of Prudential Carolina Real Estate in North Charleston, South Carolina. Sease would like to switch everyone over completely to Google Apps. But first he would like to see better synchronization between Google Apps and mobile devices, shared online file storage similar to that of Apple Inc.'s .Mac, as well as a simple desktop publishing tool similar to Microsoft Publisher."

Comments

Domains Apps better

[xant]

Our company is in the middle of switching to the Email/Calendar apps for domains. We anticipate it's going to be an order of magnitude cheaper than the labor costs of maintaining our own exim-based system, with much better quality of service to boot. It's also a fraction the cost of equivalent hosted solutions. So far we haven't found any missing features in the front or the backend; our company relies heavily on email, both internal and outgoing; if it can meet our needs, it can meet almost anyone's. Plus, the user interface of Gmail is just brilliant, and I anticipate the conversations feature, alone, will be a huge boost to productivity for our company. (This company sends about 10x as much email as any place I've ever worked.)

The online Doc/Spreadsheet/Presentation apps, though, I have absolutely no interest in. The features simply aren't there; neither is the responsiveness. OpenOffice will work just fine for us; I plan to push for a switch to that over the next year.

Re:Makes sense...

[setirw]

I only have a machine with a 200 mhz Pentium because it's a Sony ultralight PCG-505G that I purchased for $30. I did mention that I have a quad Xeon system too, no?

But my real point was exactly what you state: web based interfaces will always be inherently slower than traditional ones.

The cold, hard truth

[Cleon]

Mostly just for the hell of it, I recently started using Google Apps to document some of my personal projects. I've largely been using the Word Processor and Spreadsheet, though I messed around with the "Presentation" application a bit. I can easily see why it's slow catching on: Because the Google Apps suck.

Don't get me wrong; I like the idea behind Google Apps, and with some work I think they could be a contender for MS Office and OO. However, they still need a lot of work. The "Word Processor" is nothing more than a basic html editor; its functionality is roughly on par with WordPad. The Presentation and Spreadsheet apps seem a bit farther along, but they still have a ways to go.

What I do like about it:

• Export to PDF, Word, ODF, etc--but OO does that, too.
  
• The revision history view. Very convenient.
  
• The collaboration features - much more straightforward than MS Office or OO
  
• Interface is very smooth and quick, and with some work it could take on Sharepoint.
  

So it's got potential, IMO, and with some work it very well could be a contender. But it's not there yet. Google needs to stop, look harder at the functionality of the office suites already out there, and focus on enhancements to bring it up to date. Then in a year or two, they'll be in a better spot to compete with OO or MS Office.

Nice for certain things

[ducomputergeek]

I use it for personal stuff. I did a quick presentation and sent someone yesterday just to try it out. While I found it to be a nice application, it doesn't have all the features of Keynote or Powerpoint that are sometimes useful.

I use Gmail, but as some others have stated, it seems to be getting slower and slower to load with all the features they've crammed into it.

Now I have found Google apps useful if someone sends me an excel file that needs to be converted to a CSV and uploaded to a database. I can do that without having to load Excel or even download the file to my computer. I can do everything right in the browser.

However, I have to always be online to use it. Sometimes I'm somewhere, like Barnes and Noble, where wifi isn't free. Same thing with my hotel the other night. They were having internet issues. If I had to rely on Google Apps I would have been screwed as I needed to make some last minute changes to a presentation.

I find it a useful repository for documents, etc. that I may need access to on another machine, but it's not going to replace MS Office and iWork anytime soon for me.

Seems to me like gOffice is doing very well

[walterbyrd]

Msft has dominated desktop office apps for about two decades. So, of course, google is not going not put msft out of business overnight.

To me, millions of users, and thousands of organization paying for premium service; seems like amazing progress against a ruthless monopoly like msft.

If msft ever gets down to 75% of the office app market, then msft will not be able dictate "standards." I think that may be why msie8 is actually supposed to use real standards.

Re:What?

[guruevi]

But, the upside is, everybody can work at it from any location, no more reason to give (expensive) laptops with sensitive data that can be 'lost' or 'stolen' when they can use their own home computer/laptop and use https to work on documents.

Yes, the internet-thingy going down is a downside but I noticed that wherever I work, if the Internet goes down, the company grinds to a halt, even for people that aren't really involved on the internet for business (why does the cleaning crew or even hr need internet access anyway?)

And hardly anybody in a company uses all the functionality that MS Office, OpenOffice or iWork has to offer. For those people, you can stick to buying them the Office suite but for a lot (maybe 90%) just typing in a document or setting up a spreadsheet is as far as their business-related computer work goes.

And as for the 'cheap' part: $50/user/year for a full (or somewhat full) functional office package that is accessible anywhere with collaboration and central storage is fairly cheap. Just the licensing costs for Office are higher even for educational and then you haven't even started setting up ShitPoint, Dead Office Collaborator or a simple file storage for each department.

Sharepoint?

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'd be really curious to see numbers on the size/number of companies using Google Apps Premium vs. ones that have some kind of Sharepoint solution setup.

A bunch of people upthread have made the point that the cool part of Google Apps is more about collaboration than trying to be an 'Office Killer', and I tend to agree. Sharepoint in a lot of ways is MS's answer to that office worker collaboration question. (I've heard a lot of people bitch about earlier versions of Sharepoint, not so much the most recent, but I've barely touched it so I don't feel qualified to say if it's crap or not or how it does or doesn't stack up to Google's premium offering.)

Re:this doesn't surprise me

[mspohr]

If you're using gMail, you have IMAP which you can use for online/offline access.