Why Google Should Embrace OpenOffice.org

CWmike writes "Preston Gralla has a decent idea that could move the office needle: If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft, it would integrate OpenOffice with Google Docs, and sell support for the combined suite to small businesses, medium-sized business, and large corporations. Given the reach of Google, the quality of OpenOffice, and the lure of free, it's a sure winner. Imagine if a version of it were available as a Web service from Google, combined with massive amounts of Google storage. Integrated with Google Docs, it would also allow online collaboration. For those who wanted more features, the full OpenOffice suite would be available as a client — supported by Google. wouldn't be at all surprised to see this happen. Just yesterday, IBM announced that it was selling support for its free Symphony office suite. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine Google doing the same for OpenOffice, after it integrates it with Google Docs."

Comments

No Ads in My Office Docs

[Doc Ruby]

No ads in my Office docs, please. And if they're all going to be stored at Google, I'd rather they're stored encrypted with a password I enter into the page, decrypted on my machine inside the local page's Javascript, rather than encrypted and searchable at Google. I don't want to trust some secret code at their servers. But the local clientside Javascript would be open source, so experts can inspect it for snooping. Maybe just let me store selected metadata, like tags, for searching at the Google servers.

Now that would kill Microsoft. Not just the accessibility, but the trustworthiness. Microsoft is totally lost on that valuable feature.