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Google Apps: Should You Switch?

wired.com — Google's new web-based office software suite, which the company announced Thursday, is a swift kick to the teeth delivered squarely in the direction of Microsoft. Or is it?

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  • Onetrack, on 10/12/2007, -12/+37Yes.. I've switched the company I work for all over from exchange to google apps for small business, its been fantastic. I can't say enough how easy it is to manage rather than having a dedicated box for exchange. Note: they had the server installed a couple years ago by a guy who quit, they'd been running on it since.

    They can get their email anywhere, they get their calendaring, its all web based so its system agnostic, if a machine goes down they don't lose their email.. they need something from home and there it is, all the benefits of gmail.

    It makes using office / outlook like something from the caveman days.
    • underthelinux, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17I think all those bullets for cons really outweigh the pros right now.
      "Google Apps is incomplete."
      I think that about sums it up - it certainly can't replace office (yet). And something like VBA is an integral part of our processes. I know it stinks and all, but that's just the way it is.

      I think what would be nice is an offline portal for it. I suggest an OO portal that can sync with the google docs and spreadsheets.
    • darkspire, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18As the article pointed out (I have no idea if you read, as it just looks like your experience/opinion) there are huge privacy and regulatory implications to using Google's apps for your business. If they were selling the Google Appliance with their web apps on them that would be a completely different story, but storing all my business email, documents, etc on servers owned by Google is something that I wouldn't do even if regulations would allow it.
    • scronline, on 10/12/2007, -11/+13Very good, so let's hope that your company doesn't have any "confidential" data they're dealing with then. It is now law that anything transmitted over public networks is... public.

      Beyond that, Google is one of the most overrated companies on the planet. I'll use other products, thanks.
    • redxii, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Sensitive documents stored on third-party servers FTW?

      If you want employees to access their documents on the company's servers without setting up VPN then make your own web interface for it.
    • fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13If you think that Office is something out of the Caveman days, then GApps is Pre-Cambrian.
    • fkr2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8The email portion might replace Exchange, but stripped down, JavaScript alternatives are never going to replace Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.

      Until browsers have a way to work with local file systems and a more complete environment / language than JavaScript businesses are going to sacrifice speed, efficiency and features for portability.

      Office is already more portable than the internet via laptops.

      Nobody's game to release browsers and update/standardise a language that let you interact with a computer and have full control of the interface, access to the file system etc.
    • bepo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think that if you check your list you will see that Exchange does all of those things... I'm just sayin'
    • chicagobiker, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19It's all gravy until Google suffers a six hour outage this summer on the day you're team is trying to land a company saving deal and it falls through and you find out that EULA you agreed to with Google leaves them blameless that you lost business based on their error.

      Google apps is a nice gimmick for college kids, or to show what nonsense you can do in a web browser. But doing your companies budget planning on a spreadsheet hosted at Google and keeping your confidential contracts, etc. at the same is ridiculous. And if your small business can't afford a $400 office application suite, well, you're not really a business.

      Oh yeah, and lets not forget them rolling over and handing all of your company papers to the government at the most casual request.
    • cbergeron, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5They also get the added bonus of having EVERYTHING and ANYTHING that gets worked on in any way supervised by a single corporation that "DOES NO EVIL".

      Yeah, I think Microsoft used to say that for a while too - back in the 80's.

      "They whom forget the past shall be condemned to repeat it." (or something like that).

    • judsond, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Agreed, not to mention desktop level integration with other 3rd party apps that assume you have office. Also, how does google feel about protected health information? Does storing all your documents on their servers have any HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley considerations? You bet.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPAA
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

      And I'm a huge google fan, but until they add this to their OneBox solution so it can be hosted by the customer this isn't going very far for most companies. Even then I think it's only competition to exchange, not to office.
    • understudy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I like having physical possession of the data. Not that I worry about Google suddenly going down, but still it's nice to know that the files are nearby and not being combed through for marketing purposes.

      That's just me though.

      _
    • schoate09, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I'll be willing to try them along with MS Office 2007. No reason to switch yet, but they're a decent alternative to the java crap train wreck known as openoffice.
    • mortrek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The "Google will go down when you need it most!" argument isn't all that great, to be honest.
      You are essentially assuming that your company has the capability of keeping a complex back-end office system running with better uptime than Google. I've heard and occasionally experienced my fair share of Exchange and MS Office-related horror stories.
      The nice thing about Google Apps is that they do a good job of keeping things running, and *all* you need is the internet and a browser. No VPNs for accessing it from home, no multiple copies to worry about (one on my flash drive, one on the network, one on my laptop), etc. It brings a simplicity to business, without the hassles of servers, IT staff, etc.

      That said, I think the spreadsheet and word processor have a hard time even standing up to Word and Excel 95 in terms of functionality. They suck at importing documents as well. They also can't seem to produce a moderately printable document without exporting to PDF. Except for collaboration, I don't quite understand why businesses would jump on so fast. The simplicity is a double-edged sword...
    • deanypop, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm shocked at how many people are focusing on the easy target (Google Docs and Spreadsheets), and ignoring the rest.

      I actually did a bit of spelunking on their site - between Google's offering, and a few third party tools, you're looking at around $100-150 per user per year to completely outsource your email, IM, calendaring, single sign-on/corporate directory auth, and corresponding compliance monitoring (for email, at least).

      That, for a medium-sized business, is a very very nice price point. Keep MS Office for the desktop - yay. :/ But, for the server-side, free up your admins to do the really meaningful/pushing at the edges IT, instead of babysitting email infrastructure? HELL YES. Especially now that the legal discovery rules for email, IM, etc have become so byzantine and resource-intensive.

      The pieces I noticed that would be nicer from a "real business" perspective that are missing (but hopefully not for long, with their reasonably-rich APIs):

      1) IM logging, filtering, and recovery/search functionality (still possible if you proxy through an IM firewall - but Google should be able to BE my IM firewall, too... Or maybe that is considered evil?);

      2) Project management! As nice as the calendaring is, having it tie into a tool for tracking milestones/projects would be stellar. Perhaps a CentralDesktop or BaseCamp integration with Google Calendar would work? Still, if I'm going to outsource/ASP anything, let's not have a huge entangled web of providers, please!

      3) IMAP access for email. Why I didn't make this number one I'll never know. This they need YESTERDAY. As far as email alone goes, it's really the only missing piece.

      4) In Google Calendar, an easy way to manage shared resources (conference rooms), and resolve scheduling conflicts (first available free time for all invitees).

      There are some other minor niggles, but we're looking at server room upgrades/virtualization right now, to make life more manageable... But if we could kick out the mail server cluster, the calendar server, and not need to start building an internal IM solution, that would easily be worth the price over 3-5 years - and then we'd free two of our guys up for really interesting/fun projects.

      I realize a lot of folks are coming at this as individuals, and others just get scared away when looking sideways at the regulatory implications... But this is a solid* mid-market offering, and based on Google's history, it's going to get much much better in an unbelievably short amount of time.
    • fkr2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2@ mortrek - the odds of a server failing beyond the need for a restart are probably a whole lot less then the chances of:
      - a problem with the connection between you and google (AU has problems at least once a month with connections to the US)
      - a problem with your ISP
      - a problem with your phone or cable line
      - a problem with your internet connection speed (eg congestion caused by someone leeching torrents or 300 workstations choosing that time to update whatever)

      Any of those could ***** things up beautifully if you're trying to run a business that puts all it's critical processes out of their reach and control.
    • mortrek, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4@fkr2

      - a problem with the connection between you and google
      Yes, I can understand how some parts of the world may have this problem and for Australia, Google should probably set up a dedicated data center.

      - a problem with your ISP
      Most businesses have or should have redundancy, since email and internet access is generally critical to them these days.

      - a problem with your phone or cable line
      Smart businesses again are redundant, and usually don't run their lines across consumer grade ADSL/cable. (I said *smart* businesses, not all businesses, obviously). For a business that takes itself seriously, it *should* have something on the level of a T1.

      - a problem with your internet connection speed (eg congestion caused by someone leeching torrents or 300 workstations choosing that time to update whatever)
      Again, smart businesses won't have this problem. This is what firewalls are for. People seem to think they are only for incoming data, which isn't true, at least in the business world. You control software on the computers, you prevent unauthorized outgoing network traffic, you have a real update system. What business has 300 computers set to automatically download updates from the internet? That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.

      I'm not really all that pro-Google Apps, but some of these arguments are pretty damn weak.
    • fkr2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Pretty weak because they're only applicable to SMB's all over the world?
    • mortrek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Weak because it sounds like "someone punches me every day, but I won't change things because then I *might* get kicked".
      Many of these arguments I've seen here could be used against MS Office and Exchange as well as anything else for that matter.

      Try to understand that these things are not black and white and that different products fit with different people and businesses. Making blanket statements about the uselessness of Google Apps while ignoring the same failings in other products is just due to bias. It's become cool to hate Google, just like it used to be cool to love Google.
    • fkr2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I don't hate Google. I hate people who think some sub-standard set of tools are a replacement for much superior software. Open Office is a competitor to Microsoft Office. Google Apps is a competitor to other free/cheap web based applications, complete with all the risks web based anything has.

      I argued on the basis of connectivity, which for many businesses comes down to single or dual connections. Most desktop software has "help" online, not "the application". If you lose your internet you can continue working, even if you have to resort to local documentation or asking someone how to do something.

      I didn't even start on the uselessness of Google Apps. I don't think they really need mentioning - everyone knows there are crippling browser limitations which translate into poor interfaces and massive speed limitations on web based software, making Google Apps and everything like it nothing more than an exercise to see who can be fooled into paying for/switching to an inferior product. : )
    • verifex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I don't mean to bring reality into this conversation but, Google Apps is not a serious solution for businesses and here is why:

      1. Not owning the data storage system, Googles own servers in this case; A business cannot make rigorous backups of that data.
      2. Sensitive banking/medical/governmental data cannot be stored in a non-encrypted web-accessible place.
      3. Since the service is free, Google obviously isn't going to give a crap if your data if it happens to disappear one day. (e.g. http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/28/gmail-disaster-reports-of-mass-email-deletions/)
      4. Finely grained access control is much harder to achieve when you only can use the simple access controls Google gives you.

      And after all that, I can say that Yes I use Google Apps, they ARE pretty cool, but they have their time and place for use.
    • cclapper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Google appz rock the world. Its a defenitely a switch!
      http://www.you-switch.org
  • DarkShroud, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5I could use google and stop pirating MS, or could use Open Office for free.

    Office 2007 is hardly the caveman days.
    • squeevey, on 10/12/2007, -8/+6I just started using OpenOffice myself.
  • j0nheck, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21If Google Apps (namely GMail) supported IMAP--i'd be all over that...
  • trnscndr, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12If it supports .doc, I'm in.
    • looksliketrent, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15It supports quite a few formats.

      It can load/import Word, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML and plain text files.

      It can save/export to the same formats as well as PDF and zipped HTML.

      Although, I'd at least make sure you have some native word processor available, as network outages are a bit of a pain with web services.
  • ROFLance, on 10/12/2007, -13/+18Web based apps will never be as good as the real thing.. and besides, $50 a year.. when you can pirate office for free? psh.
    • ImTheDarkcyde, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13or you retards could actually buy the software
    • Atomic1fire, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11you know google apps has a free version
      right?
    • omghi2u2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Hmm, $50 per year? Office versions usually have a 3-4 year life cycle in the corporate world.

      And since noone in corporate pays retails for Office, it's not really a good deal either.
    • bhess, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I don't follow the author's logic on the "Cost" item. How is $50 a year a good deal?

      If you're a home user, you can buy the home edition of Office 2007 for MSRP $149. As long as you keep it for 3 years it's a better deal, and everyone in the house can use the software, not just one user (unless you want to share a Google account amongst your whole family?). For that cost, you get Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, all of whose features totally blow away the Google apps by comparison.

      If you're a business user, and you don't have a Volume License Agreement, unfortunately you can't really legally buy the home edition. The standard edition costs $350, which is 7 years of the Google apps at $50 a year. MS Office will work fine for 7 years (Office 2000 works just fine today), and you get to have PowerPoint and Outlook. So the cost difference isn't as stark as it is for home users, but it's still not a better buy.

      Besides all that, the largest complaint from most people about the MS Office suite is not that its features are lacking, but rather, that it's too expensive. Google's suite that costs more and has fewer features doesn't seem to be a better deal.
    • zhulien, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I still use Office 97 - that's 10 YEARS of google and I got a database system with it. Yeah, I could use Open Office and MySQL or similar, or even MSDE or SQL Server Express, but I actually like using Access (even though the database can corrupt).
    • kripkenstein, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"I don't follow the author's logic on the "Cost" item. How is $50 a year a good deal?"

      Google Apps has collaboration capabilities, and does a lot of what an email etc. server would. So Google Apps should be compared to Office + Exchange (and not just Office). Also, with Google Apps you don't have the cost of the actual server you would use for Exchange, nor the cost of the IT staff to manage it. So, I think Google Apps is an excellent deal, price-wise. Much cheaper than the competition.

      Whether it is _overall_ a good idea for a particular company depends on other factors, though. The article laid it out pretty fairly, I think. Basically I'd say that Google Apps is cheaper and allows easier availability, while Office has more features and keeps the data in-house. Since everyone has different priorities, the final decision will depend on them.
  • zhulien, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6f*** that's expensive. I can buy M$ office and it'll work for 100 years, and the google thing is $50 PER year, 100 * $50 = $5000! what a RIP OFF
    • broomett, on 10/12/2007, -12/+4Did MySpacekick you out of their stei fro being too pathetic and juvenile? Even the 10 year olds on that site know that people stopped using the $ for MS years ago.
  • DaveClarkOne, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Uh, I think this is a hard sell. Being reliant upon an internet connection for software isn't viable if you're mobile and unwilling to pay for a wireless signal. ASP's are fine when you have secure connections, but wireless isn't really offering the stability and speed of having Office on your machine. Plus, I wouldn't switch if Google PAID me, because my time is worth something, so why would I commit hours to learn something new (and less powerful)? Mind you, I am NOT a big fan of Microsoft. I just think this is ill-conceived.
  • zhulien, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4I've not found a use for Power Point yet... I don't see it as a negative for me to not be part of their bundle. They still have their Maths wrong. Google Apps is *MORE* expensive than the already expensive MS Office.
    • underthelinux, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8If you haven't found a use for powerpoint that means you're not high enough on the food chain.
    • Caliente, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3rofl! nice call underthelinux.
  • meat30, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Why is everyone going on about MS Office?! I don't see Office supplying users with 2GB mailboxes with webmail access. Google Apps is also totally free if you don't want the 'Pro' features.
  • Precision, on 10/12/2007, -12/+21Google Apps is too limiting. Open Office sucks. Microsoft Office 2007 wins.
    • somekids, on 10/12/2007, -9/+5@precision

      Can you elaborate on how OpenOffice.org "sucks"?

      It can do all you want a word processor to do and handles many more formats than MS Office. I don't see how that "sucks."
    • diggduggjoe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I use OO and find it works great. I use it for word processing, spreadsheets and even simple databases. For the price it is priceless. MS Office is a great piece of software which is over-priced. As for Google apps, I will stay with my own mail and file servers for now. I just do not see that anything else is secure. I have many people I communicate with using my webmail server and every email is secure. It is encrypted the entire time without any training in encryption to the users.

      Google will get there and MS will drop their prices. All is well in the free market.
    • sexycommando, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Seriously. If Google Apps can't even beat Open Office in features or price, and hardly anyone has switched to Open Office, how the hell is it supposed to beat MS Office?
    • zhulien, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0and using MS Office costs once forever instead of $50 per year!
    • hackmaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the 'one time' payment is all well until two years go by and its time for the next upgrade. fall behind and your software becomes unsupported. With today's net-connected world, and the fact that many people work on multiple computers, it becomes hard to lug all your data with you. Instead of just e-mailing it to yourself, just edit it online!
  • kavery, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13I just wouldn't want to have to rely on a constant internet connection to access my documents.

    Imagine being on a flight, not having a broadband card and not being able to access your documents.
    • SAND1, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3imagiine planning ahead and saving docs you need to your HD before you leave.

      also imagine not losing all your stuff when your dumb ass loses your laptop.

    • tm8992, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"imagiine planning ahead and saving docs you need to your HD before you leave."
      And how do you plan to open/edit those documents without access to Google Apps? You'd need something like, say, office or OO. That defeats the purpose, kind of.
    • fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Err...imagine saving your document?

      What are you, a retard? That's what VPNs are for.
  • FullMetalMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5The short answer........... Yes!
  • broomett, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11It is not going to take ANY market share away from MS Office. Zero.
    • rpgmaker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The people is losing the purpose of making office aplications web-based. Is not to take market share of the MSoffice offline, is to take advantage of the msoffice online that has to be presented to the public still.

      For a constant traveler is a great idea to have some documents online, not all of them but a few ones. This is very useful for some situations, but not to rely all your company's documents to a company that doesn't know how to erase data...
  • somekids, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I don't think people should switch to Google apps just yet; it's simply too impractical. Writely (their word processor) does not have proper support for tabs and advanced formatting. Furthermore, there is no presentation application. Finally, the online factor (as mentioned in the article) also works against Google Apps. Companies do not want their sensitive data stored on Google's servers and even though fast internet is widespread, it is still not everywhere.
  • PermaNoob, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Next thing you know Google will issue your drivers license, tax ID numbers, birth, death, and marraige certificates.........
  • fenris6644, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I never understood this obsession with making *every* application web-based. Everyone has fast, cheap computers nowadays. Why put everything online and create a degraded user experience as a result? What's next, an online Photoshop clone? Good luck pushing all that raster data over the 'net unless you're sitting on a fiber-op connection.

    Funny how Wired overlooked the coolest feature in all of Google Apps: online multi-user document collaboration. They'd be better off focusing on the kinds of features that a traditional desktop app isn't likely to have any time soon.
  • anthropocentric, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3There is 1 simple reason that I will never use gmail to replace outlook: the conversations "feature." It's terrible, terrible, terrible! It destroys the way e-mail is known to work for most people. Apparently, I am not the only person who feels this way.

    Make it an option! If Google makes it an option I will switch from Outlook/Exchange and I know 7 people personally who would likely do the same.

    Google - are you listening!?
    • sekhui, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3if conversation view is a paradigm shift for you, be afraid. be very afraid.
    • avssrs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Anthro, like sekhui said, be very afraid. If everyone was scared of changing "the way things work for most people", we'd never evolve! A major advantage of Google Apps is the (up to) 100 2 GB mailboxes mirrored on servers around the world. And who said you can't hook up Outlook to your Google Apps account with POP? Ok, POP isn't IMAP, but set things up so you organise only on Outlook not on Google and you'll be fine.

      Like for all technologies, there'll be early adopters for this one. Then there'll be those who mix and match to get the best of both worlds (I guess I'm here) and there'll be those who stay where they are (nothing wrong with that if there's a good reason).
  • tjpeople, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Nice idea, but i hope they continue to make there existing progs better.

    Also will this mean Gmail with no longer be beta? Can you really sell a beta program?
  • ArchAngel21x, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I just paid $150 for the student edition of Office, so no.
    • br1ucf, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5ouch
    • wstrucke, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4definitely not worth it
    • fkr2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Yeah .. what a rip off, $150 for software that'll last a 3, 4 or 5 year degree is a joke. You should have paid $50 a year for a stripped down version that requires an internet connection to use. At least then you could say "I couldn't do my presentation because there isn't any presentation software in Google's Attempted Office, and the dog ate my INTERNET CONNECTION!".
    • tdowling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It's a lot cheaper than the standard edition, and you get 3 licenses. For those who want to go the legit route, it's not that bad of a deal (by Microsoft standards at least).
    • kripkenstein, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"Yeah .. what a rip off, $150 for software that'll last a 3, 4 or 5 year degree is a joke. You should have paid $50 a year for a stripped down version that requires an internet connection to use."

      There is a 100% free version (ad-supported) of Google Apps. This is what a student might want to do, instead of paying $150 for Office.
  • anthropocentric, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0***UPDATE***

    I posted a new article on digg for the gmail "conversations" issue - digg it up!
    http://digg.com/software/Google_should_make_conversations_optional_in_gmail_Listen_up_Google
  • tonton2012, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3No truetype font support?
  • Wonderkind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5As soon as one decent sized company makes headlines for losing a fortune because of any sort of connectivity problem, or gets cracked by the competition, GApps will disappear faster than a fart in a hurricane.
    In Florida, after Hurricane Ivan, we had phones in a few days but cable took weeks.
  • kbro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I just tried Google Apps For Your Domain (GAFYD) out last night. It was so encouraging, then ultimately disappointing. :-(

    I am a big fan of Google products. I use Google search and Google toolbar. I use GMail, GMail Notifier, and Google Calendar for all of my personal stuff. I have 4 different email accounts all forwarding to GMail. So I though I would try out the GAFYD (Premier) on a parked domain.

    I went through all the steps, and got everything worked very nicely. I created 2 accounts. One for myself and one for my wife. Heck, I figured I might even add a couple for the kids. The new account email addresses were in my domain. It is all so cool.

    Then ... I realized I just cannot start using the new GMail account because it would mean losing all the history of emails I have kept for the last 2 years on my current GMail account. Google, unbelievably, does not provide a way to merge your previous GMail account data (email,filters,labels, etc.) in with your new account. And I am certainly not going to login to 2 different Gmail accounts to perform email searches.

    So I will not be using the new accounts on my GAFYD. Please, Google, if you want me to move on up to GAFYD, then give me a little reasonable help and encouragement.

    • deanypop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just curious, but why would you want to mix your personal and business Google accounts? Premier is really aimed at businesses, and almost all businesses will want to have a clear separation of relevant and personal mail/calendaring when possible.

      But, yeah, having another segment (Google Apps Home Domain Vanity Edition) for a lower price would* be nice.
    • avssrs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I think this is more aimed at businesses. Businesses don't (or shouldn't have) used Gmail accounts so looks like they figured there'd be no migration involved. But if you must export/import, try searching for their "Fetcher" feature.
  • DeFex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2google guy "oh look the super duper non existent online storage search pointed out that this company is about to produce a new and very cool item"
    google guy #2 "should we buy them, invest in their stock or stomp them out of existence"
    google guy "exterminate"
    google guy #3 "LoL! Microsoft are such n00bs at this"
  • Prysorra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I can't believe anyone's missed the obvious analogy - crossing the download barrier.

    Google Apps is the start of something.

    Google Apps --> ??
    Google Maps --> Google Earth.
  • Hayaemsay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If the internet's out, you're screwed.
    • deanypop, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is actually true for most businesses today, regardless of where the apps sit.

      We're 100% fat client at my office - but if we lose connectivity for more than 5 minutes, we're bleeding money. We're not trading in financial markets or running an online store - we're producing physical goods to be sold in brick and mortar stores... If WE can't afford to be offline in the office now, it really can't be worse if we started using Google. In fact, with Google hosting the app suite, if we lose our office connection, we can fire up our smart phones, or wander down to starbucks to save the crucial business deal, or find out why a shipment was delayed.

      Anyway, I guess my point is more that Google Apps might be at the leading edge right now, but I'm not sure any* business will remain immune from the need to be online 24/7 within the next few years - kind of like how the only businesses I see today without a website of some kind, or email all seem to be suffering/going out of business.
  • blogbomber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Tell me something I don't know....
  • kkirk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Office will live on because Microsoft's ability to tie it to their enterprise systems and corporate America is a long way from moving to another solution. I run OO at home and finally can say it can replace Office for most users.
    • avssrs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Outlook? Google Apps? Wow. My day job Fortune 500 company still makes us use Lotus Notes (which is another thing "corporate America" is a long way from exterminating). It's like driving a bullock cart when everyone else is comparing gasoline and hydrogen cars.
  • jcs_goog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Nice article, thanks.
  • WaterJake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google Docs is good for what it does, but once you've moved on past early high school, you need the abilities of Word, PowerPoint, and especially Excel. Google Spreadsheet is really just a joke comparatively. And not being able to work or save offline, that's just no good.
  • NetiNeti, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Tried Google Apps, didn't like it: latency, lack of privacy, missing features. Instead, I use free Open Office ( openoffice.org ) and write all my data to my local hard drive, which is encrypted with free TrueCrypt ( TrueCrypt.org ). If someone steals my laptop they cannot access my data.
  • mobilehavoc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Obviously haven't used MS Office 2007...no competition at all...
  • Caliente, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yup. Office 2007 ftw. Google Apps has its niche, but it is no way going to replace my needs - particularly at a University level when advanced formatting features are required as well as Endnote integration, etc etc...

    The amount of market share gApps will take away from MS is going to be miniscule. IF anything, the two services are complementary - u can use the gApps when you're in a pinch, but you know that for serious work the productivity of MS Office can not be beat.
  • Yazilliclick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can safely say this is something my company will NEVER consider.

    We have plenty of employees and contractors working around the world in the marine engineering industry and many of the places they travel don't have the best of connections. Having office on their machines, or whatever applications they need, means they can still work and sync up with others when they have connectivity. With Google Aps or any similar service it would mean no work would be getting done.

    Heck, even when on route to locations connectivity is not possible and is rare. At least with Office they can get work done on long flights, train rides and such. Once again, with Google, no work can be done.

    Add in that we, like many companies, deal with some sensitive information that we don't want on some server who knows where that is completely out of our control. And that the tools lack the majority of features that Office has and there's no reason to switch.

    People have to learn that office applications like these are a business market primarily. The home market is a very small fraction. For a business to change to this they would need to evalute it and come to the conclusion that one or more of the following is true:
    1) Switching to google apps will increase productivity
    2) Switching to google apps will increase quality and/or performance
    3) Switching to google apps will save the company money

    All of which are untrue.
    1) There is nothing that is part of google apps that will increase productivity beyond Office. The only place it comes close would be via colaboration aspect, however if that was important to your company you likely already have a more full featured system in place to handle it that your employees are trained with.

    2) Google apps lacks many many features.

    3) Considering the bulk pricing that most companies have for purchasing office licenses google apps at $50/year are not much, if any, cheaper over the couse of the deployment life cycle of a version of office (typically 3-5 years). Add to this that the cost of switching an entire suite of applications so central to most companies would be incredibly cost prohibitive through training, migration and new policy creation there would be no way any company would save money by switching.
  • Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2sell me a box with it on (no, not rent) and I'll be happy.
  • kckabob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm a consultant and over the last year and a half I haven't had access to the Internet while at the clients site [working for 3 separate clients]. Until they offer some sort of offline support I don't think it can take off. Telling your boss you couldn't complete the spreadsheet because you couldn't access the Internet just won't cut it. Maybe for small businesses this is feasible but overall it is still lacking business applicability.
  • Reidar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0IMO they should stick to improving search engine and Gmail.

    I downloaded Google Desktop and I think it's a piece of crap. I wouldn't hope that this will get any better...
  • TechCF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Me and my girlfriend have converted :) Mail, calendar and docs for personal finance and stuff :)
  • cclapper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Here is the mirror
    http://www.you-switch.org/electricity-suppliers
  • avssrs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0My solution would be:

    Email: Google Apps (server) + Gmail/Outlook/Whatever (client)
    Office: MS (if you can afford it) or OpenOffice (if you can't) ... online Office is only good for collaboration not for local use.

    There is no need to "switch"... mixing and matching is sufficient.
  • maccode, on 12/01/2007, -0/+0http://www.you-switch.org
  •  

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