Googling Google

Christopher Dawson, Sam Diaz and Matt Weinberger

Office 2010: Can it beat Google Docs at its own game?

By Christopher Dawson | May 13, 2010, 10:21pm PDT

Summary: Office 2010, combined with Sharepoint 2010, is a powerful collaboration platform. But is it powerful enough to beat Google Docs even though it’s drastically more expensive?

Although it was hard not to be enthusiastic about some of the Office and SharePoint features unveiled at Wednesday’s Office 2010 launch, I had to wonder how much of what was unveiled was just a pretty, expensive face on Google Docs. I also had to wonder if that pretty face was enough to beat Google Docs at its own collaborative game.

As Janice Kapner, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Information Worker Product Management, noted when we spoke after the launch, the word “collaboration” means different things to different people. From my perspective, Google had the market cornered on collaboration for quite a while, though, allowing for the simultaneous creation of content in their Docs products. For the low, low price of $50/user/year (or for free if you were an educator or were willing to sacrifice some features), Google Apps subscribers could share and create everything from websites to presentations to spreadsheets together, regardless of their physical location.

Sure, the documents might not be the most beautiful creations unveiled to mankind, but they could genuinely be team efforts without complicated commenting and versioning, emailing, and reconciling.

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Topics

Game, Google Inc., Google Docs, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

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Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.

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Can Google beat MS Office at its own game?

I think it can. Google could buy OpenOffice and use it as its Offline Google Docs. OpenOffice can provide all the features some 'power' users miss.

OpenOffice works very well with GoogleDocs and Zoho. It's like my Offline Google Docs. Also very useful when the Internet is slow or not available.

The extension OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs (gdocs_2.2.0.oxt 2.2.0) helps me upload to Google Docs or Zoho in just 2 clicks!
IndianArt
14th May 2010
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No need to buy

@IndianArt
If Google wanted to do that, they could just fork and go with a new version. They don't want to do that, though: their main sales point is no deployed apps.
daengbo
14th May 2010
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Well, MS would probably love to have Google try to fight them on their own

turf. But, I think that Google needs to change the game, or it will be an easy victory for MS.
DonnieBoy
14th May 2010
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RE: Office 2010: Can it beat Google Docs at its own game?

Although Microsoft Office 2010 may have some gee whiz features, by the time you add up all the costs, plus the extra programs needed to use these whiz bang features it just isn't worth it.
Now I'm not saying that Google Docs will "win", but more and more public schools are moving to Google Docs every day. As OpenOffice gains more visibility in the plain old user market it will gain market share. Yes, OpenOffice has it's share of issues, but when it's essentially free people tend to accept these.

In the end I think the winner will be the consumer. They will have the choice of using either or both based on their needs.
RuralWisp
14th May 2010
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As long as Google keeps pushing their cloud apps

I will avoid them. I don't trust cloud computing. Period. I want my files on my hard drive. Not on Google's servers.

Plus nothing beats full featured office suites. Google Docs doesn't come close to being able to replace MS Office or OOo for that matter.
Cylon Centurion
14th May 2010
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I don't trust cloud computing either

@NStalnecker "I want my files on my hard drive."

I second that. First, the best security is physical security, and second, the best backup is a physical backup.

However, I've used Google Docs to collaborate with off-site workers in outside organizations, and it was fast and effective. If Google could build an MS Office plug-in or more specifically a plug-in for Excel and Word that would update an on-line (cloud) document with changes made to a hard drive based primary version, and allow careful updating of a hard drive based primary version from a Google Docs version, the consumer would no doubt win, but Google could prevent SharePoint from taking over the Cloud.

I like Apple's old idea of "Publish" which they introduced circa 1990 in Mac OS 7.1 before the "cloud" was even a tinkle in anyone's eye. But even now I use Google Docs to rapidly collaborate, I'm just careful to keep it subject to my physical copy and extra careful to keep proprietary info from getting into the "cloud" version. Extra work, but does the trick.
geotopia@...
14th May 2010
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RE: Office 2010: Can it beat Google Docs at its own game?

@geotopia@...

This is not exactly what you want, but do you know about DocVerse? It's practically a hosted Sharepoint killer.
http://www.youtube.com/googleapps#p/a/u/0/qSfNQ0WeHXE
daengbo
14th May 2010
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RE: Office 2010: Can it beat Google Docs at its own game?

I agree with you. I always want my files where I work on them - my desktop. When I collaborate, I use Content Circles (www.contentcircles.com) to securely and privately collaborate with anyone I want without ever having to upload those documents to some web site.
Sri Chilukuri
14th May 2010
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RE: Office 2010: Can it beat Google Docs at its own game?

We use google docs at work, It is a shadow of an application with many hang ups. Office 2010 looks like an app. Almost how gmail(apps) took a year or so to incorporate key business email functions to actually even come close to comparing with real business email suites, docs has about 1-2 years before it actually compares to anything really. The basic functions and the hindrance of its horrid interface stops any real users in our company from using it. I am still waiting on chat rooms for their google chat but their more user than business in focus.
Willtur
14th May 2010
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Easy answer

Oh definitely Google can smack M$ in the face.
blueskip
14th May 2010
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And, the price pressure on MS Office is only going to get stronger.

Good for the consumer!!
DonnieBoy
14th May 2010
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Looks like Google was the one

that just got smacked in the face.

The problem is that while Google is busy building their apps to force people over to their cloud, MS looks to building things that apply to the needs and wants of the people using them.
AllKnowingAllSeeing
15th May 2010
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The competition is very good for the consumer. Microsoft has been forced to

offer features that they otherwise would not have offered, and innovate faster.
DonnieBoy
14th May 2010
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Then why didn't Google notice

Now that people are moving away from Google? Google Apps nevber made it to the point where they could become a "Has Been".

All they've done these last years is stay at "wannabe"
John Zern
17th May 2010
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RE: Office 2010: Can it beat Google Docs at its own game?

what about Intellectual Property and owning the rights to your work? Googles business model is data mining, and data mine their hosted solutions they do. Microsoft don't do this - their business model is to sell you the right to use a product, and what you do with it is your business.

Google scares me, whether it be their moniker (do no evil), or the fascade they hide behind (the coolness factor, anti-MS), the fact remains that they make money of your information and providing that to others, whether it be anonymously or not. I use google search on an hourly basis if not more, but I do so with the knowledge that my searches are mined and I don't really care. Most business cannot afford this luxury with internal documents, IP and the like.

Also, many organisations I know won't touch google docs for this very reason, and it's an important one. Regardless of features, in Australia I have seen many company go down the docs path due to cost, then return to the MS hosted path due to issues and lack of support. Microsoft is setup to support it's users, google relies on community support, with continual stories of no returned emails or no contact from those users that find themselves in trouble.

For these reasons, MS can justify a much larger price. The technical basis is such a small part of the puzzle - business cannot base itself on any product set that suffers these ills, without even factoring in the retraining costs and other costs of change.

I even had a contact at a lage US company that switched to docs advise they had a special agreement with google that their data wouldn't be mined / would be silo'd before going ahead. This alone gives me pause.

Information is really one of the last remaining valuable things left - if you give up the right to this, it is a scary world indeed. Nothing in life is free, it just gains value by other means - I can't believe this was ignored in this artical.

(however, I do agree that google docs is a great product, assuming the above doesn't bother you)
stewymelb
14th May 2010
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