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Google says Docs to catch up to Office next year

news.cnet.com — In a year, most enterprises will have the choice to "get rid of [Microsoft] Office if they chose to", suggests Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division.

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  • kyn2k, on 11/13/2009, -5/+71rofl...
  • thephosphorbox, on 11/13/2009, -3/+58Great idea but I know for a fact my company will not trust Google with our proprietary info/documents. I like Google Docs for my personal use, though, and look forward to the upcoming stuff :)
  • drmangrum, on 11/13/2009, -0/+41Color me skeptical. I love Google Docs, but there are things that are just better as a desktop application. I don't doubt they'll eventually reach a point where they could service a vast majority of users, I just don't see it happening in a years time.
  • cplusplus, on 11/13/2009, -12/+52A more direct replacement to MS Office is:

    OpenOffice
    http://www.openoffice.org/

    or

    AbiWord
    http://www.abisource.com/
  • specialK16, on 11/13/2009, -5/+26Why are linking us to Office 97?

    Oh wait!
  • e2superman, on 11/13/2009, -2/+23Why would I want all my companies proprietary documents on the web? Seriously.
  • dumptaker, on 11/13/2009, -7/+26Google Docs = WORST SPREADSHEET TOOL EVER
  • SpruceCaboose, on 11/13/2009, -2/+20They could have been using OpenOffice for years now if they wanted simply cheaper. Most users are comfortable on MS Office, and being an IT admin in a Governmental lab, I can assure you the vast majority of users do not want to switch from anything they are comfortable on, regardless of benefits.
  • Malnilion, on 11/13/2009, -4/+22Not sure why you got dugg down, I use OpenOffice all the time as it's a suitable Office replacement for basically all of my needs.
  • blasteker, on 11/13/2009, -0/+15haha they wish. I use google docs for school because I like being able to access all my work from any computer and not forget to email it to myself. But this is a laughable joke. Their documents don't even have PAGES. It completely screws up the formatting when you load anything into it. Open Office is the only thing close (by close I mean not close at all).
  • IFEice, on 11/13/2009, -4/+18^ Sounds like you've never used MS Office
  • Hercules, on 11/13/2009, -2/+15MS has Office for the web coming out soon too... and they do have a bit of a lead in the office suite department.
  • ziplizard, on 11/13/2009, -1/+14Call me crazy, but I kind of like not having to worry about whether I have internet when I'm working on documents. Last weekend I was at a "write-in" (for NaNoWriMo) and one lady who kept her story on Google Docs wasted a half hour trying to pull up her story because of the sketchy wifi. I had my story stored locally and could start right away.
  • krisrm, on 11/13/2009, -1/+13I love Google's enthusiasm about this, but I'm more than a little skeptical about GDocs catching up to Office in a year... needless to say, Microsoft really needs to improve in the "clouds" - moreso in the business market; Office Live, Sky Drive and Live Mesh cover the consumer end of documents in the cloud fairly well, but I'm unaware of a Google Docs equivalent of Office, although I recall them working on something along those lines.
  • enozten, on 11/13/2009, -0/+11the one thing microsoft outdoes everybody in is office. it's just really really functional, smooth-running, and universally used. but then again, it took more than 10 years to build this product. i seriously doubt google could pull off something like this in about a year.

    have you tried using word perfect? it's a pile of *****.
  • FutureGuy, on 11/13/2009, -1/+11Yes you can work 10-12 hours a day and get paid less than what you would earn elsewhere. But hey, you get free beer.
  • Lucid00, on 11/13/2009, -2/+12There's already OpenOffice plugins that integrate Google Docs.
  • theOster, on 11/13/2009, -3/+13try Google Spreadsheets for that
  • nyxerebos, on 11/13/2009, -4/+12I'm lukewarm on Google Docs, but if they put some money into making OpenOffice work well with their product they might have something I'd use, combining the best of desktop software and the cloud for services like remote access and backup of my stuff.
  • cplusplus, on 11/13/2009, -2/+10haha. Google Mail really sucks as a spreadsheet too.
  • FutureGuy, on 11/13/2009, -2/+9In other new the new Google X rocket will be ready to take you to Mars next year. What's better its free, you only need to hand over all your personal data and watch the ads on the way.
  • WunderTroll, on 11/13/2009, -14/+20Google <3
  • MissDeFacto, on 11/13/2009, -0/+6I know! They "keep" that information FOREVER. It doesn't erase, right? It's a good collaboration tool for projects you don't mind being public, but other than that, I'm not trusting Google docs with sensitive, proprietary info.
  • bjs3171, on 11/13/2009, -1/+7but it's a web app. what if you don't have internet, and need to type something?
  • chadpryor, on 11/13/2009, -2/+8For all of its advocates here, OpenOffice simply lacks the features a lot of professional office workers need for their reports. I used OpenOffice for a year in college and I have used Office 2007 in the workplace since then and Office 2007 is most certainly a superior quality product, but OpenOffice is free. If Google Docs offers a competitive or superior experience at a significantly reduced cost (vs. MS Office), it will most definitely change the competitive landscape. The more quality entries into the Office software market, the better, because it will inevitably force Microsoft to lower their license fees (that's all I'm really saying). But I understand what you are saying about user stubbornness.
  • cliffhanger407, on 11/13/2009, -3/+8Gears. LocalServer will host up the webpage, and you can store/access all your documents without a connection as long as you've synchronized.
  • diggdatt, on 11/13/2009, -0/+5Bring back Google Notebook! Putting all my notes in Google Docs is stupid and the task manager that Gmail has isnt a good enough replacement either.
  • kristophrr, on 11/13/2009, -4/+9poor Google...I preferred the good old days when they would just launch cool new stuff without prior notice. Now they're all about the marketing, they're just raising expectations beyond what they can deliver.
  • alarchy, on 11/13/2009, -1/+5This might work for small businesses, but larger enterprise/government generally wants full control of their working environment/files. Being dependent even more on your ISP and Google's uptime is a risk sometimes not worth the money of your own server farm.
  • exhale100, on 11/13/2009, -4/+8I like to use OpenOffice but some things for work simply require MS Office.
  • NoNameWorks, on 11/13/2009, -2/+6if your company buys the office package from Google you run it on your servers,
  • ZorboMan, on 11/13/2009, -0/+4Yeah, Office 2010 will have both client versions of the software and free web versions to compete with Google Docs:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2010 ...

  • hmmdar, on 11/13/2009, -2/+6OpenOffice is great for almost everything I need to do, haven't tried AbiWord yet though.
  • DanBarker, on 11/13/2009, -0/+3Is this like open office was going to; but hasn't. And wont. I will NEVER trust ANY document with google (or any other clowed based service) - but YouTube videos. They are different.
  • rpgmakr, on 11/14/2009, -0/+3I've tested it and that plugin is ***** crappy.
  • MWeather, on 11/13/2009, -2/+5"But what if you are offline completely, on a train, on a plane, or a boat for example."

    Gears. LocalServer will host up the webpage, and you can store/access all your documents without a connection as long as you've synchronized.
  • sab0tage, on 11/13/2009, -1/+4The main problem with Google Docs is the internet. Any one know if Google Docs supports macros, OLE style document embedding, data queries, forms, cross spreadsheet data links etc?
  • diggdatt, on 11/13/2009, -0/+3Thanks. I've used Evernotes but it doesnt have the easy openid login.
  • ziplizard, on 11/13/2009, -1/+4For that to work, wouldn't you:
    1. Need to plan ahead of time when you can't connect to the internet (like if you're working at home and your net goes down, you're out of luck)?
    2. Need another program to open it?
  • Soonago, on 11/13/2009, -1/+4Dugg for NaNoWriMo.
  • EddiePotato, on 11/13/2009, -0/+3Seems like speed is the main bottleneck at this point. When Google spreadsheets get beyond a certain size, the sort and formula functions bog down really bad.
  • SpruceCaboose, on 11/14/2009, -0/+2I agree that OpenOffice lacks features, but for the most of what we do at our lab, we could use OpenOffice and be fine. But with so many agencies, users, international users, etc, MS Office is the most common platform and thus the ones we use for ease of all users.
  • proverbs17, on 11/13/2009, -6/+8I like and use both Google Docs and Open Office. I don't see any reason for using MS Office.
  • ZorboMan, on 11/13/2009, -0/+2As long as you still have your Google Notebook account, you can still use it...but I agree, I love Google Notebook.

    Although with MS coming out with free web versions of office, I'm really looking forward to a web version of OneNote. It's such an awesome program.

    Although I just checked out that link that Soonago has there, and that site looks awesome.
  • PatrickBrown, on 11/13/2009, -1/+3I am curious to see how that works out for non-Windows users, given their history of poor multi-platform development.

    As long as it doesn't require ActiveX or rely on Silverlight I think it will be ok (ActiveX being completely unsupported and Moonlight always being a major version or two behind Silverlight... like all of Microsoft's partnership multi-OS products such as mono).
  • TheSabre, on 11/14/2009, -0/+2What are you talking about? Word loads up in literally about two seconds on my PC and takes 13.9 MB of memory. By today's standards, I wouldn't exactly consider 14 megs "massive amounts". Firefox, on the other hand, currently takes up 118 megs.
  • dumptaker, on 11/13/2009, -2/+4docs.google.com (or generically, Google Docs, as it says in the upper left hand corner of the screen) gives you the option of creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Perhaps you've never seen the spreadsheets in Google Docs?
  • DanBarker, on 11/13/2009, -0/+2Should of gone to school then.
  • Mateo2, on 11/13/2009, -0/+2I too reject clowed based services.
  • Soonago, on 11/13/2009, -0/+2http://www.notebook.zoho.com/

    Good replacement for Google Notebook, plus you can sign in with your Google name.
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