San Francisco — Flying high cutting through the sky and stuck up with Google Docs online? Well, now the search engine behemoth wants people to stop thinking its Web-based apps are susceptible to flaky networks. At the second day’s keynote of its annual Google I/O developers conference on Thursday, Google announced that it is adding the ability to work offline to Google Docs, the company’s cloud-based office apps.
One of the major drawbacks to using cloud-based office apps is that you have to be constantly connected to the Internet to use them. But the company Adding offline editing capabilities to Google Docs may sound like a modest, gradual change, but it is in fact a major step forward for the company’s Web-based services. And tightly hold on as those services will be taking two more giant leap soon: Offline editing is coming to the Presentations and Spreadsheet apps, too.
“You will soon see that coming out before long,” Alan Warren, senior director for Google Docs and Drive, said in an interview at the Google I/O show here. Both of the apps will facilitate users to read and edit files offline, he added, with editing abilities coming “pretty close” after reading abilities launch.
Google Docs now works offline, empowering multiple users to make amendments to documents saved locally before being updated when you go back to an internet connection. This means people working on a common documents will be able to seamlessly carry out their work offline and then when they are back online, their document will automatically sync up with the cloud.
As the I/O proceeded further, Clay Bavor, Director of Product Management for Google Apps demonstrated the feature on stage. He edited a doc, switched off the wireless on his laptop, unplugged his ethernet cable, and kept editing like normal. The docs will sync across all devices.
All the formatting still worked smoothly, and changes are saved locally to a local cache, he explained. “It just works perfectly,” he said several times, sounding very familiar to Steve Jobs fans. ‘It just works works without you even noticing,’ he said.
In fact, he closed the document, and changes were saved. He then plugged the ethernet back in, opened the doc back up in Google Drive, and it was synced again across all devices, in real time.
This novel capabilities is available today for docs. Bavor said they are working on this functionality for presentations and spreadsheets as well, and this will be coming soon. He motivated users to use Google Docs offline on their flights home from Google I/O.
As a matter of fact, offline access is important because Google Docs accompanies a big red flag: will it work when the network dies or you just get disconnected? Without that assurance, a Web app will forever lag a native app in a very important way.
“We want to get people thinking Web apps are just as immune to network flakiness as native apps,” Warren said.
Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said this is a good move for Google Docs but he is not sure why it took Google so long to do it.
“Offline access is something that Google should have made a priority and delivered before now,” Old said. “Web access is not nearly as ubiquitous as some might think and being able to do useful work offline is critical to most business people.”
And on the go that is a big deal as Google tries to convince customers to pay for Google Apps, its suite of online apps that costs $50 per year per employee. Many organizations sign up for Gmail and Google Calendar, which work offline using mobile phones, but Google doubtless wants more people using word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, too.