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Google Docs Aims At Microsoft Office Live

Posted by Zonk on from the ready-steady-edit dept.

mikesd81 writes "Channel News reports that Google took an important step forward Monday in its rivalry with Microsoft Office Live, reporting that Google Docs will allow users to edit word processing documents offline. Google said users of its Google Docs word processing application can use Google Gears to save and then edit documents without being connected to the Internet. 'The offline capability will be limited to word processing documents, though the company plans to add it to spreadsheets and presentations in the future.'"

2 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. consortium needed by suck_burners_rice · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why isn't a consortium forming between Google, Apple, and OpenOffice.org to give all three office suites the capability to edit each others' documents with 100% formatting and content compatibility, and 100% support on Windows, Mac, Java, and X11 based *nix environments? Each one of these organizations is formidable by itself, able to fight Microsoft off a bit here, a bit there. In the end, though, they're each a 600 pound gorilla, and Microsoft is an 800 pound gorilla. But these three organizations together, a team weighing in at 1800 pounds, would crush Microsoft like an ant.

    --
    McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
  2. Re:Rivalry? by LLKrisJ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OpenOffice is the only thing within striking distance of MS Office And even then, it often leaves much to be desired. I honestly applaud the efforts to come up with an alternative to MS Office. Because although MS offers a lot of functionality with it's software (You can produce some nice, stylish docs, as long as they stay relatively small) it also contains some absolutely incomprehensible faults;

    1) Why the hell doesn't Outlook provide decent IMAP access??
    2) Why can't I copy my Word2007 equations to Powerpoint???
    3) What is up with that crap Master Document implementation
    4) ...

    That said though, OO can only compete with Office it it offers at least full support for all features in MSO. That means, opening doc or docx in OO would not lead to layout corruption, etc... Until now, that still is the case. Especially the OO Powerpoint counterpart I find particularly horrible.

    I have been watching OO for a long time (4 years), but it seems bewildering to me that with current adoption by some governments and the large open source community, development of OO still seems to be progressing so horribly slow.

    In the meantime I will stick to LaTeX and my trusty WinEdt for big docs...