Microsoft=Success; Google Docs=Fail?

I love MS Office 2007 (and 2008 on my Mac). It’s one product that I think MS has done exceptionally right.

But my workflow these days starts with Google Docs. It’s simply the easiest way to keep something synchronized between my many computers. The versioning is dead simple to use, and the collaboration is nice for when someone else is doing the editing. It’s only when I’ve finished writing it that I copy it into MS Word for formatting.

In a general sense, I’m always surprised these kind of comparisons get made, since the two offerings offer almost completely different feature sets. One is designed for collaborative editing of a glorified HTML document. The other is designed for formatting and ultimately printing.

It’ll be interesting when/if Microsoft offers these kind of collaborative features (and if they’ll be free to use – ie, not require Sharepoint or Exchange), and what Google will do to stay competitive.

I think everyone realizes Google Docs is far from ideal, but it does fill a niche and if you’re someone that can use the features it offers, then it’s a pretty great product.

I thought about doing all the things Karim said to do. You’d end up with a seriously ugly document.

Scoble, when you share a sensitive document, either Brin or Bill can read it. Edit it, if they want
Both have failed to secure user data.

Slate: Can Google Kill PowerPoint?

http://www.slate.com/id/2176549/

The debate about Google Apps vs. Office is kind of meaningless outside of the larger issue of which market is being targeted. Google’s recent release of the “team” version of Apps, designed to bypass IT oversight tells me they are targeting SMBs (where the limited functionality they provide may be adequate), but have thrown in the towel on enterprise adoption:

http://www.ratdiary.com/2008/02/10/google-cedes-enterprise-to-microsoft/

The debate about Google Apps vs. Office is kind of meaningless outside of the larger issue of which market is being targeted. Google’s recent release of the “team” version of Apps, designed to bypass IT oversight tells me they are targeting SMBs (where the limited functionality they provide may be adequate), but have thrown in the towel on enterprise adoption:

http://www.ratdiary.com/2008/02/10/google-cedes-enterprise-to-microsoft/

Robert,

Check out blist.com – They have an amazing online database application. It is a work in progress but they are adding features at a very fast pace and soon the application should be ready for read stuff.

The front end is done in Flex and provides a very rich experience, much better than what AJAX does today.

In my opinion, that’s the direction online applications need to take if they really want to match the capabilities of thick applications.

-R

Think back Robert to when you first left Microsoft. I seem to remember you saying that you would never get used to working with online documents, or any calendar/mail system other than Outlook.

I know quite a few people, young and old, but mostly old, that say the same thing to me all the time. I send them a link to a Google doc, ask them to change it and save it, I make changes. Then I show them the revision history, how we can both work on the document at the same time.

I expect oohs and aahs, but instead I get “I just can’t get used to this!”

The problem of course is that their time frame for “getting used to this” is measured in minutes, not days or weeks.

I know a guy who carried around a 10 year old cell phone held together by scotch tape for years. He had painstakingly memorized all the key sequences for the phone and refused to learn a new one, even if getting a new phone would mean all sorts of new capabilities.

I’m sure there are people who will never voluntarily stop using Office. But there will be new people who come along having never used it.

The end-point is not (as Ballmer believes) Microsoft vs Google. The end-point is online data, with choice of UI (user interface) vs local with only Office, or maybe something like Open Office. Google Docs is still not only a Beta, but a limited prototype. still is is good enough for most of the documents I create.

Reuters recently used a plain old Google spreadsheet chart as the graphic on an election results page. They updated the spreadsheet behind the scenes and the public just saw the resulting graphic on a page. It stood up to huge load and was not done as a promotional stunt in conjunction with Google. They didn’t pay Google for extra bandwidth etc. It just worked.

That’s the future. Things on the web that Just Work, even if you don’t have Windows or Office installed.

Maybe one day Microsoft will even participate in the change. But they have to put away their tape dispenser first.

Larry Page (not the real one, according to IP addresses) if you were really a reader of mine back when I worked at Microsoft you would have remembered that I regularly praised Microsoft’s competitors and took shots at Microsoft’s products.

Stephane: you’ll note that I don’t use Microsoft Word much anymore and have switched almost everything in my life over to online stuff.

Anti-virus: have you looked into the encryption used to protect data at Google or Microsoft? The privacy policies? I have. Bill Gates isn’t allowed access to the data stores at Microsoft.

And, if you have a document of such high sensitivity, it’s pretty easy to encrypt it in a way that no one would be able to read it, even if they had a supercomputer trying to hack it.

Microsoft gives instant access to their Live Office Beta if you have a .edu e-mail and from using it, I can vouch for its integration and ease of use if you have a copy of Microsoft Office on your local machine.

Of course, I’d like to see some of the tracking features make the leap from Word to Live Office but that isn’t a big deal unless you don’t have Word on the computer already.

Lotus Syhmphony. It may not help in all situations (like mac’s), but it is an option for all those machines and less need to pay full whack for the msoft stack.
I am starting to use it a bit, its still all beta. Using more open document formats should help people build nice mixed mode documents, sometimes online sometimes private.
It is amazing though isn’t it that something as apparently simple as word processing is still vexing us in the tech world!

That is of course http://symphony.lotus.com/

until office live comes out of beta, i think that google’s offering of allowing access to your content online is good. What isn’t good is its web based productivity suite, which is ‘fail’.

i’d like to see google put their ample money where their mouth is, and produce some suite addins for office, open office, office mac, etc, that allow users to save content directly from the apps to their google cloudspace. Much like microsoft do with office live.

of course, that’ll never happen, because they’re too busy being hypocritical and sitting on the fence (with their feet dangling on apple’s side, of course)

Hunting around, it seems the only genuine MS Office alternative online is ThinkFreeOffice (http://www.thinkfree.com). Zoho, Buzzword, Google Docs are just text editors that seem based around HTML WYSIWYG editors.

TFO aims to be a real MS Office compatible suite.

Computerworld 12 months ago said of TFO: “If you’re concerned about document compatibility with Microsoft Office, you want ThinkFree. There’s simply no contest.”

That’s my impression too. It’s biggest failing is it is a Java app and has slow screen refresh. (Which I think also means it’s not iPhone compatible?)

ComputerWorld also rumored that Google was looking to buy TFO, which would be great if that had happened.

Here’s the link to the CW article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9007884

hmm – Microsoft got by on creating software that was just good enough to be acceptable and Google Docs is better than that. Buzzword looks even better. When millions of people are willing to spent just a couple hundred bucks at WalMart to get a mediocre computing experience, Google Docs makes more sense than MS Office. And given that Google can sell advertising space and eventually, I’m sure, start charging small fees for extra features priority access speeds, or no advertising, or whatever, Microsoft’s whole business plan is beginning to look faded.

I have MS Office and Open Office on my pc but I never use them any more except when I need to print. I find Google Docs good enough for 95% of the things I do. The only thing I care about is having easy access to my documents from any computer. Google Docs gives me portability. I will never buy MS Office again.

I found ThinkFree more than adequate for reading and writing compatible Office files. Like Office, and Open Office, it did about two orders of magnitude more things than generally wanted to do.

On Windows the Wordpad editor is about right for me, on Apple the built-in text editor will read and write Word files and on Linux there are several options for a QUICK way to create richly formated documents that can be later uploaded to Google Docs.

officelive / google apps does not encrypt files on their server, there is no such feature that I have seen. if you are talking about https, thats different.

my questions remains the same, how one can prevent Bill Gates/Sergey Brin, consultants/employees working at google/MS reading (possibly abusing) them. Even if they abuse, the evidence itself resides inside their servers. (one way I can prevent it by third party solution as you said)

they can argue that they have strong self discipline, but why should I believe them ?

Can we ban any further discussion of this issue until all participants have read and understood The Innovator’s Dilemma?

Does Google Docs currently meet the needs of a large percentage of users? No. Is it trending in that direction? Yes. What is the cost to the consumer?

Is MS married to ongoing incremental improvements of a mature product? Yes. Wat is the cost to the consumers?

Anyone see a pattern?

Geoff: I do and there’s a reason I left Microsoft. You nailed it.

Why they have all those super-smug college grads from Ivy Leagues, working 89 hours a week, with 20% free time, they can’t fail. Google’s arrogance and hiring practices will do them in, one-trick-pony really.

But to think that corporates, governments, medicals, schools (and everything that surrounds them) will abandon Office just for some online text editors, is Steve Gillmor-level foolish. Twizzleheady geeks might not need some of the Office 2007-level features, but thousands of customers still do.

MS don’t listen innovation, I sent them set of innovative ideas for project “ “ (I worked extra 30% of my time totally 130%). Did they read it? Yes, did they respond? Yes but, did they discuss on it? No, all they do is ….. they have numbers – chase chase chase and kill. talk talk talk about ROI, investor value…and bla bla

where is innovation?
at MSR.. after eating billions of $, recently they showed a table, and now a telescope(?) Robert has cried, I believe he has acted otherwise you don’t allow him inside again. Who wants table? Wots next? A tea/coffee cup and a rocket? Show us something that we can use every day every our, increase our productivity to 500%.

wot is fundamentally wrong at Google? transparency..Google still don’t know a simple formula: “trust = revenue”

Back to me previous comment, there is another pattern going on…US Gov rapidly increases spending (recently 100B plan) to secure people on the web.