Does Google's online office pose a worthwhile threat to MS office ?

Question

Most of the users use very basic feature of MS Word and Excel, which is provided by any office suite in the market, and, every office suite saves the files in MS Office format. There is one totally free office suite is available i.e. Open Office, which is good for almost every need of an intermediate-to-advanced user. Even then, users preferred to pay handsomely (or in some cases, using pirated versions) but not using those other sensible options. What could be the reasons for this behavior ? Whether the same reasons will not interact with Google's service offering ? What are the chances of Google's success with corporate user where the savings on data maintenance cost will be a big consideration ?

Answer 1

Google's Office suite may be an attractive offering to companies already willing to outsource their IT services. Many companies are still unwilling to do this for securing their proprietary information. Open Office has come a long way and can potentially start picking away at MS Office's dominance, especially if the Open Document standard wins favor over Microsoft's Office Open XML standard.

Answer 2

When I got my new computer, I used OpenOffice for many months, since I figured I didn't need to pay close $100+ for MSOffice. I was able to do simple projects with the suite, but it didn't have the features or power of MSOffice. Its slideshow tool was be far the worst in my opinion, and I find PowerPoint much more powerful. As much as I like opensource, Microsoft's Office is more stable and useful than free alternatives. It seems like opensource office software is a collection of components, rather than once central and powerful core product (as MSOffice seems to be). I finally decided to purchase Microsoft Office 2007 and it was probably one of the best decisions I made in regards to software. My productivity has increased and even with the new layout of MSOffice 07, I was still able to work better than I had with months on OpenOffice.

Google's office suite, though I haven't used it much, will likely face the same problem. It will be good for simple tasks, but large projects will require the more professional software.

Answer 3

I for one think they have a pretty good chance. Remember that Google isn't attempting to make money off of selling office software, so they mostly win from the arrangement: They get more traffic and more attention for the brand of Google, and all they're out is some diskspace, which costs next to nothing nowadays. So they don't have to give very much to get what they're getting.

I think there's a lot of people who are well served by this. Folks who don't have a lot of money who don't have their own computer. Folks who want to work on shared projects. Folks at small businesses and non-profit organizations. The amount of piracy of MS Office speaks to the level of demand on the part of people unable to afford Microsoft's offering.

A small business has plenty of other expenses for every employee they take on. Then consider what it takes to give them a computer: one to four hundred bucks for a copy of Vista plus five hundred or more for Office. Computer hardware is so cheap you can easily pay more for the software than for the hardware with even a modest Office installation. Also, Microsoft's business model fairly demands that they rewrite Windows every few years and convince people to upgrade, and often that means convincing them to buy new hardware to run the software they paid for.

We haven't even begun to discuss lots of things real businesses worry about: ongoing maintenance, virus protection... The ongoing cost issue is a big factor that may make even large businesses stand up and take notice. Big businesses can either afford the redundancy or pay for a locally hosted version of the system that is taken care of professionally rather than pay to license software and then pay for upgrades and maintenance to that software.

While free alternatives like OpenOffice have their own advantages to offer, I don't think they completely replace an offering like Google Docs. And I think there's plenty of room for both kinds of systems to eat Microsoft's lunch.

Answer 4

Google online office suite will take some time to be popular in India. Majority of the users of internet in india is availing the dial up networking . broadband or always on connection is very less. to work satisfactorily one has to get broadband account. and it will take time in India to have it. so for now now its not adviceable to have it and no threats to offline versions

Answer 5

Not really, mainly due to speed and features. It's a good temprary alternative, but not permanent.

A viable threat would be OpenOffice.org, Star Office or other applications like them.

Answer 6

MS office have more functionalities and problem solving capabilities, therefore I like it better. Plus, you don't have to be online to use MS Office.

Answer 7

Possibly. It depends on the security.

Some corporates may find it attractive provided issues of privacy and intellectual property can be addressed.

Answer 8

Thats deep, long live linux and open source!!!