
Google Drive launching third-party add-ons program for Docs, Sheets - cmulligan
http://www.zdnet.com/google-drive-launching-third-party-add-ons-program-for-docs-sheets-7000027215/
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brudgers
This doesn't smell like a core component in Google's long term strategy. It's
a great idea for Google's users but not really for their important customers
[advertisers]. While there is certainly money to be made, a startup would be
at the mercy of Google's whims and changes to product direction.

I'd gauge Google's ambivalence of commitment by the fact that seven years ago
this sort of model could have been implemented. But it wasn't and there isn't
some new technology that is driving it now nor is there a red blooded eeffort
behind it. Avery has been providing label printing support for word processor
software at least since DOS versions of WordPerfect.

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aggronn
If you believe ChromeOS is part of their long term strategy, you have to
believe this is. Add-ons for sheets can potentially make sheets truly feature
complete compared to excel, which is THE biggest argument against
ChromeOS/Windows parity by the average user.

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brudgers
We're nearly five years on with ChromeOS and it's barely a blip in the market.
The reason is that latency is deadly and if all that's going on is web
browsing and media consumption a slate with touchscreen is more attractive
than a clamshell with keyboard.

Google's spreadsheet implementation is pretty much like every other
alternative to Excel. It implements some fraction of the things which are
easy. This makes it good enough and development stalls and people for whom
spreadsheets really matter stick with Excel. Microsoft is often accused of
missing trends, but spreadsheets are not one of them. Excel is the killer app
that drives Windows sales for corporate desktop systems.

There's a reason it remains uncontested even by Google. Doing what Microsoft
does with Excel is really hard...or at least the hard parts are.

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inthewoods
I'm not completely disagreeing with you - but I'm also not agreeing with you.
When I look at the way my company has adopted Google Sheets, I think Microsoft
might have more trouble on their hands. While certainly there are hardcore
spreadsheet tasks that only Excel can do, I find that most common business
tasks that people use spreadsheets for (e.g. present a budget) are more than
well supported by Google. Now, this is not to say that this translates to user
adoption - I have no idea if they are actually displacing Excel users, but I
do think they are aiming for the fat part of the bat.

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brudgers
I agree that Google's spreadsheet is good enough for most people. My point is
that good enough for most people appears to be good enough for Google, and
that's why it won't replace Excel in many organizations.

The reason Excel is the killer app for corporate sales is that it is
attractive to influencers (to borrow the term from social media). There are
people on the executive floor who use Excel and often quite well. That's where
the decision comes from. They don't want to fool with finagling their
subordinates' TCP reports out of Scheme in a Grid, or Libre or Docs to crunch
the numbers.

The power of Excel to drive top down decisions is why WordPerfect disappeared.
Secretaries didn't choose Word. Their boss bought office because she wanted
Excel and Word was part of the deal.

The fat part of the bat for Google is free as in hog pens and slop troughs.
And that's the basis upon which they allocate resources. The development of
Docs is so glacial that just about any expansion of the ecosystem is news.
Even a whopping 50 developers.

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cromwellian
The best add-on I've seen internally is one that can format/color code
snippets in your doc, great for engineers.

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alooPotato
when do you typically have code in a google doc?

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cromwellian
Design docs, specifically if you're discussing an API or a code generator.

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lalos
Interesting strategy to compete with the not so well known add-ons for MS
office. I actually forgot Office had them until I saw this post about GDocs.
Here is an example, Avery Templates for Word
[http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/store/avery-templates-
app...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/store/avery-templates-app-for-
microsoft-word-WA102925881.aspx?redir=0)

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Zigurd
Did they provide a sufficiently rich API to make add in for equivalent
functionality on Android devices? Is there even a business productivity
strategy for Drive apps on Android? Bleck.

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rajesh1386
For the same thing I am searching from long time

