Mountain View, California — In a surprising move that would make it easier for users to access its Drive cloud-storage service on the Chrome browser, Google early this week quietly renamed its Google Drive applications, while releasing its Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations apps as standalone apps inside the Chrome Web Store.
Beginning today, the programs previously known as Document, Spreadsheet and Presentation tools — rivals to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint respectively — originally went under the Google Docs banner, before that got folded into Google Drive in April along with up to 5GB of free cloud storage for documents, videos, photos, and more.
Now, according to Jonathan Rochelle, a Google director of product management, who wrote about the changes in an Oct. 23 Google Drive post on Tuesday, they are now called Docs, Sheets, and Slides, the apps can now be installed independently from the Chrome Web Store. This will be of particular interest to those buying into Google’s latest Chromebook push.
Moving forward, simply add them to your browser for one-click access whenever you open a new tab. Drawings, Forms, and Script apps are also available. Chromebook users will see the apps in their apps list by default, once the next Chrome OS update launches.
While it took Drive only a few months to make the jump into the Chrome store, Docs has been hanging around for six years. Besides, the search giant has been active lately with changes to its Google Docs, Apps and Drive offerings in the business and consumer marketplaces.
Among other functionality that Google Docs boasts is its built-in exporting feature that allows users to directly export Docs files into Microsoft Office using formats recognized by Office. Google Docs had planned, however, to stop allowing file exports using the older formats supported by Microsoft Office versions from 1997 through 2003. Google was trying to transition Google Docs users to only do file exports directly to newer versions of Microsoft Office.
In fact, the built-in file export modifications suggests that files composed in older 1997 to 2003 Office formats, including .doc, .xls and .ppt, would have to be converted into the latest Microsoft Office formats, including .docx, .xlsx and .pptx, before they can be exported from Google Docs to Microsoft Office users.
In addition, the store comes into its own for those using a Chromebook, which runs Chrome OS. That operating system is effectively the Chrome browser, and having the apps available on an individual basis gives users a more familiar, arguably PC-like experience.
Apparently, as Chrome has picked up steam among Web users, Google has had less success with its Chromebooks $549.99 at Amazon. Last week, however, it unveiled the $249, ARM-based Samsung Chromebook, a low-cost option that might appeal to a broader audience.