
Google Launches A Major Offensive Against Microsoft With “Going Google” - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/02/google-launches-a-major-offensive-against-microsoft-with-going-google/
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mikedouglas
Paper, billboards, and blimps? At least they didn't waste any money on
AdWords.

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yef
Actually, they both spend money on AdWords:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=word+processor>

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yef
Why the downvote, if I may ask?

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GavinB
Moving to Google Docs would be a big step backwards in functionality. Word +
Dropbox is perfect because it combines cloud availability with native
capability.

If you want me to switch, you need to offer something better. The ability to
handle the organization of large documents would be a great start. I'd love
something with the features of
<http://www.bartastechnologies.com/products/copywrite/> would be awesome.
CopyWrite is only for Mac and I don't want to switch OSes just for a word
processor . . .

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quizbiz
Google Docs would definitely be more trusted if it worked a bit more like
dropbox. Special folder where docs were automatically synced to. Browser +
Finder = redundancy and assurance.

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litewulf
I remember seeing a google docs python backup tool. I think it'd be pretty
awesome if there was some sort of two-way bridge for this sort of thing.

(Hm. Let me go check out that google docs api...)

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mullr
"Go Google"? Checklist of features? Really? This smells like a bad IT magazine
ad. It lacks the class I expect from them.

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lunchbox
I'm trying to understand why this bothers you. Are they not supposed to talk
about their features?

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mullr
It bothers me because of the associations it brings to mind. This style of
advertising is indicative of the kind of product development that google is
supposed to stand against. When I see such an ad, my first reaction is to
think "if you have to advertise like this..."

Of course there are all kinds of good reasons and places to talk about
features. This way of doing it just feels tacky.

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smithjchris
Google Apps doesn't cut it for more than a casual business user. The
spreadsheet is hideously slow and doesn't integrate with the real data sources
that organisations use, there is no equation editor for docs (a big risk if
you ask me when someone technical comes along) and due to the "cloud" nature,
it doesn't deal with the legal and confidentiality requirements of most
businesses. It's also lacking in OOB solutions like invoices, purchase orders
and reasonable looking templates etc.

Word 2007, Excel 2007 and TortoiseSVN (which has the ability to merge excel
and word docs) any day. If you're cheaping out, OpenOffice is still much
better.

Google Apps is a step backwards indeed.

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mechanical_fish
In my business, the sharing feature of Google Apps trumps all of the missing
features that you mention.

It does mean that the use cases for Google Apps are all subtly different from
their Office counterparts. Yes, the spreadsheet isn't for classic spreadsheet
applications (like financial projections or heavy-duty number crunching); it's
better suited as a kind of HTML table display that's easy to update and can do
simple sums. The word processor is like a very fancy WYSIWYG HTML editor --
but, in a world where almost nothing that I type is destined for print, that
feels quite appropriate to me.

Very few people in my company generate invoices or POs. When I did so as a
freelancer I used special-purpose web apps.

There are also special-purpose equation editors (Mathtype) for the two people
in your organization who actually use them on a regular basis. (I used them
far more in school than I ever did in real life. I managed to work half a
decade as a research physicist without touching one more than twice. Sheets of
paper are a marvelous invention. ;)

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smithjchris
Err, we just use TortoiseSVN for document management. The documents go in with
the source code.

You can merge stuff, have multiple authors working on the same document, get a
full revision history and do all that other junk that Google docs does. Plus
it's in house, works over the web (over https) and can safely be delivered
over our VPN solution without having to rely on a 3rd party like Google for
security, storage and availability.

There is a LOT of benefit in being able to wake up our sysadmin and fix
something that is down rather than wait on Google to do it.

Word costs us virtually nothing thanks to MAPS[1] from microsoft which gives
us 10x Vista, 10x Office for $350 the lot (for internal use) and a couple of
copies of windows 2008 server and an exchange license.

There's no point in fishing out $100 for mathtype - Word 2007 is very close
now.

[1] <https://partner.microsoft.com/40016455>

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torpor
One thing Microsoft has that Google doesn't: the ability to keep working even
when the 'net goes down. People who think the 'net doesn't go down: haven't
used it long enough, in a production environment.

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riffic
not true, google docs has offline capability via Gears.

and html5 "fixes" this as well <http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/>

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torpor
Ah, well I was not aware of this - you learn something new every day. Glad you
explained this to me, because it seems that its a common perception, even if
its not true, that Google apps need a 'net connection. I will now investigate
the truth (got no use for Google Docs or MS Word, personally) and attempt to
correct it when I hear that line again ..

