Does the Office War Start Now?
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.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:36 am
There will always be a cause to celebrate for a specific Web audience when online productivity tools come along that can compete with the MS Office suite. My feeling though is that such an audience will be restricted to the techs (made up primarily of MS haters) and includes a more visionary segment of the online crowd. These offerings won’t be such a hit with the IT depts, or IT consultants (for small to mid-sized firms) that would inherit the annoyance and hassle that can come with the potential for breaches of confidential information and data to occur on a much wider scale using Web Apps and “free” productivity tools.
Even when the usefulness of “free” productivity tools causes IT to seek thin client or online productivity solutions for their mobile workforce, the corporate culture will always look towards fulfilling that need with enterprise software installed on the client or company network, or on a Web application platform within the internal infrastructure, and where data collection isn’t a part of the providers service and revenue model.
I think Adobe sees the potential to meet the needs and cultural sensitivities of corporate audiences with its Flex 2 Web application development platform - for instance, here is a handy tool I discovered that uses Flex and is essentially the online equivalent to Photoshop.
June 20th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
What’s missing from all the online apps is a sense of working on a desktop. I think these guys may have the missing piece:
https://desktoptwo.com/