« You Want to be a Rock Star? | Main | Wanted: Kick-Ass Music Bloggers »
Does the Office War Start Now?
By Mark Evans | June 20, 2007
Google has rounded out its office suite portfolio with the purchase of Zenter, which makes software for online slide presentations, from Y Combinator. Ironically, Zenter co-founder Wayne Crosby said earlier this year that “We want to be the Gmail of PowerPoint.”
So the Google portfolio now includes;
Google Docs (Word, Excel)
GMail Google Calendar (Outlook)
Zenter (PowerPoint)
So, let’s get this office war between Google and Microsoft really started now that Google has pretty much the same arsenal as Microsoft. As well, Google is rolling out Google Gears, which will allow for off-line capabilities. The big question is while Google is ready for Office users, are Office users really ready for Google, especially within a corporate environment? My sense is maybe small and medium size businesses will be early adopters but Big Business will mostly sit on the sidelines for awhile. After all, no CIO ever got fired for buying Microsoft, right?
For more thoughts, check out Om Malik, who points out Google won’t be successful unless it can have seamless integration between all its applications. Meanwhile, Read/WriteWeb has a good rundown on the online applications suites now available.