Google is barging up its pressure on Microsoft with Presentations, the latest addition to its suite of free, Web-based productivity applications…
“The rumored arrival of a Google option for creating and viewing slide-based presentations became fact with the debut of its newest feature on Google Docs…”
Mountain View, Calif., — Google Inc. has expanded its online suite of office software to include a business presentation tool similar to Microsoft Corp.’s popular PowerPoint, adding the latest twist in a high-stakes rivalry.
And now, that Google has a full-fledged productivity suite, it has shortened its name from “Google Docs and Spreadsheet” to simply “Google Docs.”
Google Docs, a Web-based platform for creating, sharing, storing, and publishing documents, has offered capabilities for word processing and creating spreadsheets, but has been missing a major piece of the Microsoft Office puzzle — until now.
“On Monday, Google added business presentation software — an element that many analysts said was preventing the Web-based office suite from contending with Office on a larger scale.”
The option to create a presentation with Google’s online suite has been on the radar since Google disclosed it in April 2007 — about five months after Chief Executive Eric Schmidt announced Google would add the application to its software arsenal.
The new program will be included in Google’s free software bundle, called “Docs,” which users must be online to employ. And the company will sell a souped-up version to businesses, universities and government agencies for $50 a year per user.
The tool, which provides functionality similar to that of PowerPoint, allows users the option of creating new presentations with the slide editor in Google Docs. The technology comes from a blend of companies Google acquired for their slide-based innovations.
After logging in to access the suite, users will find presentation files listed alongside documents and spreadsheets in the Google Docs list. They can be edited, shared and published using the Google Docs interface.
As with the other Google applications, Presentations allows several collaborators to work on a slide deck simultaneously. When it is time to make a presentation, participants can simply click a link to follow along as the presenter takes the audience through the slideshow. Participants are connected through “Google Talk” and can chat about the presentation as they are watching.
“The Presentations application is available in 25 languages.”
Presentations seem to be a natural addition for Google Docs because they are usually created with the intention of being shared. “If Microsoft is correct that collaboration is a key driver, then solutions like Google Docs may be a better fit for many organizations,” said Paul DeGroot, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft.
Because Google Docs is part of the broader Google Apps suite which has been available as a free service since August 2006. Beside Google Docs, Google Apps includes the large storage-capacity service Gmail, Google Calendar (shared calendaring), Google Talk, which is an instant messaging client, and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page on a specific domain.
But the lacking of an equivalent for Microsoft PowerPoint was considered by many analysts a weak point of Google Apps. With today’s announcement it seems that the problem has been solved.
Of course, it took little time after Google made its initial announcement for the market to speculate on the impact Presentations will have on Microsoft Office. The simple reason behind the delay has been that Google is seeking to establish parity with Microsoft on the desktop with the development of its own office suite of productivity applications.
“We have already freed those of you working in teams from the burdens of version control and e-mail attachment overload when going back and forth on word processing and spreadsheets,” Sam Schillace, director of engineering for Google Docs, wrote in a blog posting in April, when news of the forthcoming Presentations was first announced.
“From student groups to sales teams, people are turning to the Web for help improving both personal and group productivity,” Schillace, said in a statement. “Putting documents in the cloud surrounded by easy-to-use features for collaboration and sharing can save people hours of inefficiency and frustration and even enable new ways of working together.”
“It just made sense to add presentations to the mix,” he added. “After all, when you create slides, you are almost always going to share them. Now students, writers, teachers, organizers, and, well, just about everyone who uses a computer can look forward to having real-time, Web-based collaboration across even more common business document formats.”
But is Google Presentations a threat to Microsoft PowerPoint? The short answer is “Hard to say.”
The delivery of the presentations application will no doubt once again turn up the heat on industry discussions that Google Docs and Google Apps rival Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity applications and the Outlook/Exchange messaging platform.
Google officials point out that Google Docs and Google Apps are not intended to replace Microsoft Office and Exchange, but rather complement them or be an option to users and organizations that do not have them.
The way Google sees it; presentations are a natural addition for Google Docs because they are usually created with the intention of being shared. Web-based, collaborative presentations eliminate the need for users to manage and compile group members’ input in separate attachments, and make it possible for multiple users to view a set of slides while a moderator controls the presentation.
DeGroot said that Microsoft’s solution is expensive and does not lend itself to inter-organization sharing. “Companies developing Web-based applications are, to some extent, limiting the effectiveness of Microsoft’s most important Office strategy, which says Office tools are a great way to collaborate and communicate,” DeGroot said.
“The difficulty there is that Microsoft’s strategy really lacks a Web element,” he concluded. “Google’s solutions are inherently collaborative inside and outside of an organization.”
Google’s business presentation software attempts to answer Microsoft’s PowerPoint with a Web-based twist. The application lets users create simple Web-based presentations that coworkers can update and view from their own computers.
Google incorporated the presentation, creation and document conversion technology it acquired from one of its many recent acquisitions — Tonic Systems, which is based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. Presentations’ main selling point is its online accessibility, which is Google’s specialty.
The new Google Presentations feature is available online at http://docs.google.com.