Google's Office Applications

Google's core office applications - Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs

Google provides free office applications which run in a Web browser, including:

Gmail

Email, address book, chat, indexing (very useful for finding misplaced emails on a particular subject - so useful you may not want to file emails in specific folders), spam filtering, and 3 gigabytes of free online storage capacity (many years worth of emails for most people).

Google Calendar

Includes reminders which can be sent to mobile phones, integration with Gmail for sending invitations (and capturing details of events mentioned in other Gmails), calendar sharing (selectively, under your control), ability to create public calendars (eg for clubs and social groups), details of public holidays in the UK and other countries, import and export to Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo! Calendar.

Google Spreadsheets

A spreadsheet application which does just about everything that most people would want to use Microsoft Excel for. You can save spreadsheets to your computer hard drive in Microsoft Excel format. You can upload CSV files, Text files, Microsoft Excel (.xls) files and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) files.

Google Documents (Writely)

A word processor application and the original application in Google Docs. It is based on Writely, an application which Google acquired some years ago. You can insert short keywords ("tags") in documents which enable Google Docs to show you lists of documents which contain references to these keywords. Documents can be shared by sending an email invitation to any number of people, or as a blog. You can upload Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text (.rtf), OpenDocument Text (.odt) and StarOffice (.sxw) documents, as well as HTML files and plain text (.txt) files. Files can be saved to your computer hard drive in Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF, OpenOffice, and HTML formats.

Google Presentations

An online presentation tool, substituting for PowerPoint and WebEx. It does not have all the features of PowerPoint (though you can upload PowerPoint presentations and modify and share them), or of WebEx - but it has enough of what most people need.

The most compelling feature of Google Presentations is the ability to make a presentation over the web. Google Presentations blends the power of WebEx and similar online presentation facilitator companies with a PowerPoint substitute.

Google has made it very easy to conduct a presentation to people at multiple locations: each presentation you create / upload has its own URL. You simply email the URL to whoever you want to present to, they click on it, and you control the progress through the slides on their screens. The online application includes a Chat (instant messaging) function, which activates as soon as more than one person joins a presentation in "View" mode. You can see who is online in the "Audience" for a live presentation. The final ingredient would be to create a voice conference call, perhaps using Skype, so you can talk your audience through the slides as you present.

Google Office and Google Apps

Google is becoming a major threat to Microsoft in several areas, not least in competing with Microsoft Office. Alternatives such as Tesco Software are quite cheap, but Google is offering very real alternatives for FREE.

In late 2006 Google announced Google Docs & Spreadsheets: a combined word processor and spreadsheets service. With its name shortened to Google Docs, and the Google Presentations application added, Google Docs has been joined by Google Apps which provides an integrated online workspace for members of a work team or company.

With the exception of premium version of Google Apps, Google's office applications are all delivered as free online services.

You do have to be connected to the internet to use them, which makes it an alternative mainly for broadband users.

Advantages of using Google applications:

• Great alternative to using Microsoft Office
• Designed to help people collaborate on documents and projects
• Cost is $0.00 (usually)
• No software to install (zero disc space)
• No regular "security updates" are needed (Google does this for you on their servers). "Security updates" are a regular inconvenience for Microsoft users.
• Access your files, calendar, and email from any computer, from any location in the world (no need to carry your laptop around).
• Most Google applications are written using a technology called "Ajax", which means the application behaves pretty much as if it was running on your own computer. (No need to wait for new screens to download each time you make a change to a document).
• You do not get bombarded with advertising, pop-ups and the like, though there are some "sponsored links" on a few of the Google screens.

Disadvantages of using Google applications:

• You need to be online to use Google applications
• You might feel nervous that the files are not on your computer (but Google is keeping it in a secure, backed-up corporate data centre environment, so it should be fine).
• You might have privacy concerns, even though Google does not share your data files with anyone.
• Even in Google Apps, the Google office applications are not particularly well integrated with each other, though they work fine individually.
• You have to register with Google, and some applications are "invitation only" so you may need to know someone who can invite you.