Using the Cloud to share Word, PowerPoint and Excel
Many companies today use Google Apps to run their business, with integrated email, spreadsheets and online documents. Last week, Google announced a new technology that will enhance the way you want to collaborate on traditional Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents. Microsoft themselves have released a suite of ways you can collaborate on these formats, morphing their Office Live platform into Windows Live SkyDrive - where you can either upload static Office files, or use the Office Web Apps for real time collaboration. However, the Office Web Apps have their limitations - they are scaled down from the full desktop software products so they will work well on the web.
The Office plugins from Google now allow any Google Apps user to essentially use Google as a place to maintain online versions of their full Microsoft Office documents. This means that you can use your desktop version of Word, Excel or PowerPoint to create the best possible document with all the advanced features that the desktop software suite offers, and also keep that file online (in google apps), so that it's accessible by whoever you choose to share it with. Plus, according to the video that they released (shown below), it allows you to intelligently merge the changes made when two people edit the same object (e.g. same sheet on Excel), and do this all online, so that the best version is always online.
This means that we're a step closer to bridging the gap between feature completeness of our document creation tools (dominated by Microsoft), and the pervasiveness enabled by google (think Google Apps, high uptime, and easy accessibility on an Android phone for those who have them). Though this may be Google's move to bolster the Google App product, trying to win yearly software seats from business customers, in reality it benefits every user of Google & MS Office by merging the competencies of each company.
More about: Cloud Google Office direct mail postcards SaaS
