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www.cbsnews.com
April 12, 2010
Google has made some under-the-hood changes to its Google Docs product, promising
faster service and real-time collaboration tools.
The changes address many of the demands of Google Docs users for more speed and
better compatibility with offline products like Microsoft Word and Excel, said
Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager for Google Apps. Google's Dave Girouard,
president of the Enterprise group, is expected to introduce the changes at Google's
Atmosphere conference Monday in Mountain View, Calif.
Google has had some success getting companies to switch to its suite of Web-based
office productivity software, but there's still an awful lot of corporations using
the tried-and-true desktop-based software. But Google's long-term vision of
computing is based around the notion that the Web and the browser become the primary
vehicles for applications, and Google Docs is an important part of realizing that
vision.
The main improvement was to create a common infrastructure across the Google Docs
products, all of which came into Google from separate acquisitions, Rochelle said.
This has paved the way for Google to offer users a chance to do
character-by-character real-time editing of a document or spreadsheet, almost the
same way Google Wave lets collaborators see each other's keystrokes in a Wave.
Those changes have also allowed Google to take more control of the way documents are
rendered and formatted in Google Docs, instead of passing the buck to the browser to
make those decisions. This allows Google to ensure that documents will look the same
on the desktop or in the cloud, an important consideration for designing marketing
materials or reviewing architectural blueprints, for example.
Rochelle acknowledged that for certain tasks--for example, huge spreadsheets riddled
with complex formulas--Google Docs can't quite replicate the desktop experience. But
the company grows closer to that goal with each new release, and the improvements
rolling out Monday get Google closer to that ultimate goal, he said.
In addition to the long-term strategic vision, Google Docs is a key part of its
quest to find something other than search ads to keep the dollars flowing. This is
one of the few areas in which Google actually charges for its services, asking for
$50 per user per year for access to Google Apps Premium, which also comes with a
more traditional take on customer support than Google usually employs.
It has the added benefit of tweaking long-time rival Microsoft, which makes a ton of
money from Microsoft Office sales. Microsoft is also intent on delivering online
office-productivity services to its customers, with plans to release online versions
of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint to users with Office 2010. That will be introduced in
May for business users and June for consumers.
Google plans to discuss its plans for the enterprise and cloud computing at the
Atmosphere conference, which around 400 CIOs are expected to attend Monday.
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