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Google To Steal Office Web Apps' Thunder?
Barence writes "Google has stepped up its assault on Microsoft's productivity software with the acquisition of a start-up company that allows Office users to edit and share their documents on the Web. The search giant has acquired DocVerse for an undisclosed sum. Product manager Jonathan Rochelle said DocVerse software makes it easier for users and businesses to move their existing PC documents to the cloud, and that Google 'fell in love with what they were doing to make that transition easier.' Microsoft said in an emailed statement that Google's acquisition of DocVerse acknowledges that customers want to use and collaborate with Office documents. 'Furthermore, it reinforces that customers are embracing Microsoft's long-stated strategy of software plus services, which combines rich client software with cloud services.'"
Most developers don't realize this, but average users absolutely hate web apps. They typically aren't anywhere near as easy to use as normal desktop applications.
The ones who hate them the most are the long-time users who once were able to use real applications, but were forced into using "upgraded" web-based versions. They saw their productivity drop, and they're not happy about it. After all, they're the ones who then get stuck putting in longer hours to do the same job, just because of a supposed software "upgrade".
As long as Google focuses only on the web, then Microsoft has absolutely nothing to worry about. Their desktop applications will always be superior to whatever web-based apps Google or anyone else might put out.
How do I get Google Office to load in the less than .5 seconds it takes the various Office apps to start on my local system?
What Office apps are you using? I'm using Open Office and I just opened the spreadsheet app. it took exactly 11sec to open and present a blank spreadsheet.
On the other hand loading a 2-page long existing document in Google Docs just took 2 seconds (that's with a trans-national proxy through my company's gateway in the middle) in a browser that had not previously visited Google Docs (and thus had no cached JavaScript, etc.)
My experience with MS Office is that it's faster than OOo, but slower than Google Docs.
However, both MS Office and OOo speed up significantly once you've already loaded them once on most platforms. Why? Because they stay resident, taking up system resources. You can do the same thing in your browser with Google Docs. Just keep a tab open with Google Docs and all of your documents will come up faster.
The real bottom line isn't a matter of benchmarks, however, it's that the original poster's claim that Google Docs was "bloatware" ignores the fact that it's an implementation of a very large system which is at least as bloated in every fully-featured implementation.