Google Sets Sights on the Office

August 28, 2006 · 9 comments

According to MSNBC and the entire blogosphere, Google will be releasing a set of Office tools as an extension of the whole “for your domain” service (remember how there was gmail for your domain?). The free bundle of online applications being unrolled today include gCal, gmail, gTalk and Page Creator as Google Apps for Your Domain. It’s only a matter of time until they add Google Spreadsheets and Writely to the mix.

{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

1 J Phill August 28, 2006 at 11:03 am

I’m very anxious to see how this operates, and I’m curious as to how it will work with a domain? Never the less, I love what Google is doing and I will continue being a fan of their products.

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2 Ghettiz August 28, 2006 at 11:40 am

I think this is all great, but I’m not sure it makes sense for business uses. As a head of an IT department, I know I’d be uncomfortable with hosting e-mail and documents on an outside server, no matter how un-evil Google appears to be. I might be more interested in a package of web apps that I could buy and host within our own network, or maybe an appliance if there were assurances that it could be upgraded.

However, I guess there might be businesses who would be less hesitant.

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3 Allyn August 28, 2006 at 1:11 pm

Note: If you signed up for Gmail for your domain, and are using it, you are already signed up for Google Apps for your Domain.

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4 Paul Stamatiou August 28, 2006 at 1:19 pm

Allyn you’re right – I just got it all setup on my domain as I previously had gmail for your domain setup.

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5 scott August 28, 2006 at 1:26 pm

Until Writely and Google spreadsheets are added, I see this as a lot of hype. Very few businesses will find this useful. Even then, relying on an internet connection for working on documents is not something many businesses do. Most of that stuff is kept internal.

And does google having a copy of everything you do really appeal to most businesses?

BTW, it’s interesting that I’ve read a lot of posts about Writely now that Google owns it. Only a handful of people seem to remember it was not created by Google and that they purchased it. Many of us (myself included) had writely accounts long before google grabbed. I never really used it all that much, though.

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6 CarLBanks August 28, 2006 at 2:03 pm

They’ve given us Page Creator…big whoop. The other tools are great, but do we really need Page Creator on our domains? WordPress works perfectly fine.

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7 James Little August 28, 2006 at 4:31 pm

I’m not really impressed. The early hype around this months ago was huge.

I could see this being useful for small businesses or startups, but I don’t think it’s ready to compete in the enterprise.

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8 Pierre Lourens August 28, 2006 at 9:43 pm

This isn’t useful now, but when it really begins competing with Microsoft’s office suite, with Spreadsheets and Writely, then we will see some interesting action. The problem with it all, though, is that the geek will be the only one using Google’s services. I agree with Scott, that businesses will be wary of using it because relying on an internet connection is not very reliable :)

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9 titanium_geek August 29, 2006 at 3:36 am

for the small (read: very small) businesses which are running on very low capital (or even not-for-profit) will really like this- no more paying for separate licenses per computer- or the recurring nightmare of the door being bashed down by the anti-piracy police. Businesses running over many continents will appreciate this too.

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