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

Why?

[prockcore]

What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking?

And why would Google use OpenOffice to fill that gap when they could just improve Google Docs?

Re:Why?

[peragrin]

what really gets me is that google docs uses Open Document format as it's default output. use open office locally and google docs on the road for the same document.

you can swap back and forth. You can use google docs to store your files pass US customs and download them again quickly and easily once you have passed customs.

i am not seeing the point of the article.

Re:Why?

[vux984]

What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking?

Not running in a browser on AJAX, the stupidest application 'platform' ever congealed?
Working reliably when offline?
Working reliably with large documents, with embedded images etc?
Performance? Even if you thought OO.o was slow, you'll be amazed at how badly you can bog things down if you implement it in mighty javascript, inside a browser.

And why would Google use OpenOffice to fill that gap when they could just improve Google Docs?

You mean by making google docs a real application instead of a gimped web based browser hosted mess? Why re-invent the wheel? Just enhance oo.o to store docs to google's servers and call it a day.

Personally though, I don't know why anyone would even BOTHER with google docs. If you want web based document access I think we should be striving for remote desktop hosting and application publishing.

Citrix already has this, and if you've ever used MSOffice as a published Citrix web application, you'll know what I'm talking about. None of this flaky ajax crap. Accessible from anywhere. Documents exist on the corporate server. It costs a bundle to license though and I don't know if it supports linux. -- but isn't that where FLOSS shines? I'd rather see this over another half baked AJAX app.

Re:Why?

[moderatorrater]

First, it doesn't operate entirely over the network ajax-style. For most things, you don't need the document to be online and updated live. When I'm using Google Docs, especially the spreadsheet program, it's dirt slow and slows down the rest of my browsing, too.

Second, it provides an interface that's familiar to people, better than google docs. For a nerd like me or most of the people on slashdot, google docs works just fine; for people like my parents, OpenOffice is more familiar. Google can make internet browsers sing and dance, but the browser just can't replicate the experience as well.

Third, it gets existing OpenOffice users to switch to google docs. The ability to save to google docs as easily as to the hard drive would be a compelling feature, at least to me. I run a DnD game online and I use google doc's spreadsheet to manage characters; this would make it a lot easier for me and my players to use it all.

I would use this for my DnD game and most of my documents that I could possibly want in multiple places (and that wouldn't be interesting to law enforcement or identity thieves).

Re:Why?

[Threni]

> Not running in a browser on AJAX, the stupidest application 'platform' ever congealed?

Web apps are shit, period. If you want security, run in a virtual environment, or just stick with apps from people you trust, like Google.

Otherwise you get flaky, embarrassing, unresponsive bollocks which fails the second there's a network problem anywhere between the servers in the States, thousand of miles away from me, right up to my ISP and the little bits of metal connecting to me. Plus my data isn't being sent halfway around the world for some spotty bedroom boy to packet sniff and/or fuck about with. That's the worse possible solution.

Surely you want the opposite - apps downloaded from the net, run locally, with internet access as and when needed - infrequently, probably.

Re:Why?

[dave562]

Citrix already has this, and if you've ever used MSOffice as a published Citrix web application, you'll know what I'm talking about. None of this flaky ajax crap. Accessible from anywhere. Documents exist on the corporate server. It costs a bundle to license though and I don't know if it supports linux.

And if you want to take it to another level, you can implement something like this...

http://www.sonicwall.com/us/products/Secure_Remote_Access.html

It will do RDP or Citrix connections via a web browser, no VPN client software required. So anywhere you have a web browser and internet access, you have access to your applications and documents. Of course it isn't free, but when it comes to IT, I find that you get what you pay for.

Re:Why?

[Firehed]

For the most part I agree with you. However, remote access doesn't offer the realtime multi-user collaboration that's a part of Google's online office tools. Setting up centralized documents on the cheap is quite possible these days - I work for a company that sells that kind of thing, but for all intents and purposes it's an interface wrapped around a glorified subversion repository with some unrelated features that deal with the rest of that whole intranet thing. Hell, truly dumb it down and just have an FTP server. DropBox is one of those newer Web2.0 things that's basically a fancy wrapper around FTP (once again, we're starting to realize that user interface and ease of use is key to adoption); it's only meant for one user at a time and is more of a personal cross-computer document syncing tool. However, none of those to my knowledge deal with what happens when two people want to work on the same document at the same time. What we have at work has a check-in/check-out system, and DropBox would probably just give one user a read-only copy (since it treats it more like a network drive than an ftp server, and that's what happens on a local network). Google Docs/Spreadsheets, on the other hand, allows multiple users to edit the same document in real time and have each other's changes pushed to all other editors as they're being made, much more along the lines of SubEthaEngine.

Granted, not a whole lot of people need that kind of functionality most of the time. For what I do, it's actually a great asset - it sure beats the hell out of emailing a document back and forward a dozen times over the space of ten minutes. And the functionality, again for what I do, is plenty - I'm just sharing lists of ideas with colleagues and clients 95% of the time. All of your points against Google Docs are very much valid, and I was going to point them out myself. The accessibility during offline time is the real killer for me, as I don't have a cellular card for my laptop and can't be bothered to pay for wifi at hotspots, so it certainly can't replace a desktop text editor. Some combination of a desktop editor, the "push FTP" of DropBox, and the realtime collaboration of Google Docs would be THE winner, but that's asking for a lot.

At the end of the day, there's no one tool that's right for everyone right now. OOo is free, functional, and will get the job done for most people. Word is expensive, more functional and stable, somewhat faster, and has advanced features for power users that most people will never go near. Google Docs is free, limited in functionality, but doesn't require installation or local storage.

(Yes, I know I didn't really address the whole Word/Citrix thing; however, assuming you have VPN access then you're already able to get to the central repository and then there should be no reason to bother with the published web app through Citrix thing since you could just locally install OOo/Word - the file access is the crucial thing there more so than the app itself. Yes, this still isn't quite what you meant, but humor me)

Re:Why?

[commodoresloat]

You can use google docs to store your files pass US customs and download them again quickly and easily once you have passed customs. Awesome! Can you please post instructions for how to do this using drugs instead of files?

Re:Why?

[ozmanjusri]

Google can't detain me if they find something in my files they don't like.

Basically, they already do

[yog]

You can already import and export to OpenOffice from Google Docs. What more do we really need? Furthermore, I doubt that Google would gain much from taking sides. They are the premier provider of web services and that is where they should stay. Desktop applications are the past, web services are the future. Microsoft Office as a desktop application will eventually fade, too.

Now, if Google wanted to give OOo a nice grant, that would be most welcome :)

What a stunning revelation...

[Stanistani]

Imagine the repercussions if a large technology company like Sun Microsystems helped the development and support of OpenOffice.

They could twin its codebase with their own corporate version and then the sky would truly be the limit.

OpenOffice just isn't very good.

[Wulfstan]

I was working with a teacher on Sunday night trying to prepare a presentation in OpenOffice (it was running incredibly slowly) and she said "I hate OpenOffice". She isn't a geek, she doesn't particularly like computers, but to her it was a huge disappointment to have to use OpenOffice instead of being able to use PowerPoint.

So far from a knockout punch, I think OpenOffice barely registers in terms of it's disruptive influence. I don't use it, my employees don't use it and everyone I know who has to use it hates it. Perhaps it's time as a community we considered alternatives. The "quality" of OpenOffice isn't something I think people are particularly happy with.

Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good.

[Thai-Pan]

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

When I was a student, before getting assimilated by MS (I am now a MS employee), I ran Linux exclusively on my school laptop and used OpenOffice full time. There's no way around saying it, it was a terrible experience. When it wasn't crashing, losing my documents, or in some other way completely failing to function, it was painfully slow, bordering on unusable.

I stuck by it and fiddled with it until one day in a lab I had to do some extensive spreadsheet work. Specifically, getting data out of a tab-delimited file, approx 15,000 rows and ~5ish columns. Every way I could possibly attempt to open, paste, import this file would throw OpenOffice into a seemingly endless loop. I'd wait 20, 30, 40 minutes, but it couldn't handle this 100kB file no matter how I diced it. I made all sorts of excuses as other students were doing the same thing in mere seconds on their Windows PCs or Macs. It was the last straw for me and I gave up, and used the lab machine with MS Office to do the same thing in about 5 seconds. A similar lab experience only a few weeks later, and I ended up dual-booting my laptop "just for Excel", and before I realized it, I liked the whole Office suite better than OpenOffice. I still used Linux primarily at that time, but every time I needed anything remotely Office related, I simply found OpenOffice to be inadequate.

Sorry, I'm really not trying to be a troll about this, and I know many folks will scream bloody murder at me for even posting because of my bias. But before I had such a bias, I tried so very hard to love OpenOffice, and just couldn't. Like Wulfstan said, the quality of OpenOffice is just not very good.

If I were Google, I'd be working hard to carve out this niche market for online services and stay out of desktop apps beyond perhaps plugins for better online integration. OpenOffice doesn't fit with Google's business model, and frankly, I think Google could probably crank out something superior to OpenOffice from scratch anyways.

Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good.

[caseih]

Wrong again. OpenOffice is written primarily in C++. It's surprising to see this myth perpetuated. Certain things like Base and various import export plugins require Java, but certainly not OpenOffice itself. Please stop spreading this kind of untruth. Besides being untrue, it's not relevant.

Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good.

[AnyoneEB]

Needing MS Office is a bad reason to switch away from Linux. It runs quite well on wine.

Personally, I do not use either because latex covers almost everything I would use an Office suite for. In the rare occasion I need a spreadsheet, I use gnumeric because it works a lot better than OOo Calc. That said, Excel is a great piece of software. A good replacement for it would be quite a project.

you mean like this?

[nguy]

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd

Google and OpenOffice.org already happened

[ikeleib]

Google hired developers to work on OpenOffice.org, but found it difficult to fill all the vacancies. They seemed unwilling to work on the project understaffed and the people they hired now work on other things.

You can see a C|Net article about their hiring from a while back:
http://news.cnet.com/Google-throws-bodies-at-OpenOffice/2100-7344_3-5920762.html

Re:Sun and Google actually cooperating?

[njcoder]

Sun and Google actually cooperating?

Never! When satan skates to work! What rock have you been hiding under?

Google Adds Star Office to Google Pack

You can get Google Pack Here.

I'd rather they developed a word processor...

[argent]

I'd rather they (or anyone else) would develop a word processor that doesn't make me want to cut my hands off and write raw HTML by whistling morse code into a telephone because it would suck less.

I am SO tired of every word processor out there, including the one by the white kool aid clan, mimicking the worst drawbacks of word because it makes it a bit easier to roundtrip documents to and from Word. I'd rather have the native format something like Docbook, but I'll take HTML if that's the only way to get real nested document structures and markup as THE native format.

Re:Sounds like a

[maxume]

Google is an advertising company. They might make a little money providing search, but they make most of their money selling advertising (which is why the spend so much time developing products that people will want to use, it gets them eyeballs).