The rise and rise of Google Office

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 18 April 2007 21:16

Opinion and Analysis

Eric Schmidt's repeated denials that Google intends to compete with Microsoft in the office productivity space is beginning sound like the utterances of the CEOs that insist they have no interest in the current stock prices of their companies. Their job is to run the business well and let the stock price take care of itself. Except we all know CEOs watch the stock price and Google isn't developing its office suite just for fun.

Now that Google has added an online presentation application to its word processor and spreadsheet suite, the question is can Google actually throw out a challenge to Microsoft Office? The short answer is not right now. The longer answer is that in the not too distant future, an online office productivity suite with a name something like Google Office could well shake Redmond to its foundations.

There are just so many advantages in terms of collaboration, centralized virtually unlimited storage, integrated web-based email and calendar, platform independence and machine independence that an online office productivity suite could offer over the existing clunky bloated desktop versions that it is plain to see where the future lays.

One problem for Google is that none of its applications - not even its word processor Writely - are ready for prime time yet. Another problem is that we don't live in a permanently connected world.

That said, Google's new office suite can be likened to an electric car that only has a range of 100km between charges. The petrol heads who can go 400km and then fill up again within five minutes can look on and smirk at those poor electric car owners. However, 95% of car owners only drive 40km a day.

Most of the time these days, computer users don't switch on unless they can connect to the net. There will be those odd occasions when you're on a plane or train (unless you have a mobile internet connection) when you're offline and can't do any work. Then again, with an online office suite or any other SaaS application, you don't even need to have your own computer to do work. Any computer with a reasonably good internet connection will literally give you access to your office.

The inevitable conclusion is that Google's office applications will only get better, internet connectivity will only improve and there's only one direction for the market share of Microsoft Office to go.