Google’s Office Suite Complete: Google “PowerPoint” Confirmed

Great!
Google has done it again!
I wonder what is next ?

Google have apparently purchased a company called Tonic Systems, who provide ‘world leading Java PowerPoint automation products’ according to Google cache info:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com.....cting.html
http://www.tonicsystems.com/

He says it won’t be a threat to Microsoft, and I agree with him. However, I know he means differently… so I’m going to have to disagree with him.

Man, why so complicated?

The office products are interesting to me b/c they have very little to do with Google’s 2 stated goals: search and advertising. Office tools are portal items to make the brand more sticky, a problem Google doesn’t have right now. In an enterprise space, they could charge for them, but that is a different ball of yarn then anything they’ve done until now.

“Google has done it again!”

Google has done what again? They haven’t launched anything yet, I would hold your horses before congratulating them…

I’m thinking Google Office Professional 2007 Small Business Edition, or wait, that was Mickeysoft with the really long product names..

Like Eu said.. What’s next.. maybe:
Google Flowchart (Mickeysoft Visio)
Google Database (Mickeysoft Access)

hm. either way, I’m all for Google apps.. even if I don’t use them they create a playing field in the market that will result in people realizing there’s more than just Microsoft and may result in people fanning out to other products.. or perhaps this is just wishful thinking

Too bad for Zenter…

How do we know that this is an office suite completed? If you compare 1-1 then yes I guess but I don’t understand how anything is complete.

Competition is good and will give us better products from both Microsoft and Google. I would assume office’s biggest competitor right now is open office as its making some large inroads.

Google is the new WalMart of software, in that a bunch of startups build cool products (calenders, start pages, blog search etc., etc, etc………), then in comes the Giant G and wipes them out.

The consumer benefits because they build great products but the smaller providers get squeezed.

What would they even buy? I have yet seen a reliable and decent web-based powerpoint.

The cop out is for one of you people to show me some link to some lame Flash-based animator that you get to “share” and what not. I don’t want to share, I want to make a powerpoint or better yet a keynote.

Alaska - that’s debatable, but another issue is, does Google really want one more new platform to try to integrate into writely, jot, etc.

“along came the google and wiped the startups out”

Alaska, how about this one: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....fice-race/

it’s still a ’sign up and use when we open!’ thing.. but it aint flash

This is a buy/build, by the looks of things.

See my post, first trackback above. They have bought Tonic Systems, which has some sort of product in this area, but definitely not as consumer facing and ready to go as Writley.

Would that Presently leak be indicative of an internal dev build? They have enough engineering resources, they surely can churn something out.

They built their spreadsheet, but didn’t they purchase an Israeli company (two guys, forget the applications name)?

I use the Google Docs alot, but for presentations I use Keynote. There’s nothing like Keynote. Presentations are more than just some bullets that people repeat. At least good presentations.

Im with Alaska on this, this needs to be a robust product for a power using business community or its going to be a joke. I use google docs, and I like thier stuff, but for heavy number crunching I still use excel/access because the web based app’s cant do the job.

So like PPT, to be a serious contender for the business crowd it needs to have the same utility, if they can couple thier obvious value propositions as well as meet the needs of business users I can see them doing well. Otherwise it’ll be the same, use google docs for light, easy stuff and use MS for the heavy lifting when you need a real app.

I love the web but I also love my desktop, and somehow I see MS better positioned than Google to deliver something that blends the two. Someone cares to explain why I could be dead wrong?

BTW I agree with #2 and #4

Google will buy 37signals, you heard it hear first. =P

How long will it be before Google becomes the target of an anti-trust lawsuit, filed by Microsoft?

Hmm…just received email from the ‘Google Enterprise Team Team’ about their Google @ Work seminars

Regarding the suite in general, user habits are a bitch - I wonder how well they can penetrate the small to mid sizers…Dealing with this market for a couple of years now and to paint with an ultra-wide ass paint brush, 40+ yr olds will not go for it at all, they are comfy with MS PP/Word/Outlook/etc. as through the fog they see the silverlight

The Mark Zuckerberg’esque crowd might go for it and host ALL thier documents in the ‘cloud’

@Michael Vu:

37signals in cahoots with Jeff Bezos and Amazon. I would not be surprised if Amazon one day decides to jump into the ring and start innovating more so than their little web 2.0 trick ponies. Multiple Amazon-based startups in Santa Cruz have been spamming craigslist over the past months looking for talent.

Awesome… Google has done it again…

“Schmidt also said that they’re office suite” –> “Schmidt also said that their office suite”

Adding to “Rian Orie” wish list from Google,
Google Media Player,
Google Project
..
Google O/S

17 above “Im with Alaska on this, this needs to be a robust product for a power using business community or its going to be a joke. ”

on day 1 ? no, I think this needs to cover the core features of presentation software, with a nice set of easy collaboration features, controllable sharing, and integrated nicely with google docs.

Keeping head to head in a feature race with desktop preso software is dumb.

its a buy..they aquired Tonic Systems to work on that part

It burns my eyes to see you spell “they’re” like that, man. You have a law degree, co-authored a book, etc. What gives?

Till today Desktop application is always better than web based. Which even Google accepts directly or indirectly saying as “basic office suite”. Their real challenge is on integration as mike says.

http://www.suggestusability.com

Hi Mike,

They bought Tonic as a catalyst to this announcement:
http://www.tonicsystems.com/

Build. The details were revealed a couple of months back. Besides, the Writely developers must have done *something* since they were acquired and got a new lick of CSS.

Bad investment Y-Combinator….Zenter is about to be Kiko’ed

Rob - nope. Buy. see Eric’s comment and the update above.

This sounds like a nice addition, but as someone noted above, wasn’t there some app called “presently” that was supposed to fill this need and be released soon? I could’ve sworn I read that here.

Anyway, can we please have an API release for Docs?

I’m waiting for the web-enabled database application.

And Google Docs, btw, is NOT ready for prime time. I was using it last night to work on a SIMPLE budget spreadsheet and would sometimes have to wait like 20 SECONDS to insert a row or wait for a stupid formula to calculate. ANNOYING.

If they can fix some of their server issues, then I’ll start more seriously considering it.

And by the way, they were saying this was nearly launched way back in the beginning of February.

@MistOne

Correction, that should read:

“Along came the Google and wiped the dinosaurs [ Microsoft ] out.”

“Multiple Amazon-based startups in Santa Cruz have been spamming craigslist over the past months looking for talent.”

More SC startups? OK, we haven’t been spamming Craigslist, but AmazonWS is the power behind SteamStreet, and we’re based in wonderful Santa Cruz, CA.

I’ve yet to really be impressed with the Google online office tools. The spreadsheet is fine for simple things, but I tried to put together a fairly complicated budget spreadsheet, and finally gave up after getting constant errors and delays. I’m sure it will get better over time, but I don’t seen any threat for a while.

I think I’d much rather see an Apollo based application… something with better client-side integration (ie. printing, files), with links to the web.

Hello,
I am developer of new web-app that does like Microsoft Power Point. Can please you tell me if you like buy my product. Very cheap, easy integrate in your large application. Email me please. Thank you.
- Boris.

I saw microsoft newest map technology. It’s got little better and more improvement

Google Innovators? Not so much. Purchasers of innovation, more like it.

Comparing Google as a threat to Microsoft’s Office suite is like comparing Microsoft as a threat to Google’s search business.

Both companies are big enough and smart enough to try, but don’t confuse trying and succeeding.

In the interest of decent journalism, it might be wise to point out that the difference between ‘their’, ‘they’re’ and ‘there’ is not a particularly difficult concept.

“Schmidt also said that they’re office suite isn’t a threat to Microsoft.”

Great.

Hmm… in-house dev was revealed in Feb (http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/02/google-presently.html). A change of direction.

This office suite has the potential to do for Google what Skype has done for Ebay. Nuffin.

I was watching some talking head on CNBC preaching that Google needs to focus on what their business actually is…search. Everything else is a distraction that could eventually lead to their downfall.

I guess time will tell.

I personally use OpenOffice and I think it is great…you would have to be crazy to buy MS Office…what a total waste of money. I did use Google’s stuff while it was in beta/labs and it was horrible. Caused me a lot of headaches. Have not been back since.

Why is Google so interested in trying to say they aren’t going to be competitive with Microsoft? Though, I must say that I’ve run into problems trying to convert people from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice - mainly related to legacy document translation and an unwillingness to learn a new interface.

two things.

1. looking forward to google’s powerpoint (although i hope it looks more like they sniny keynote)

2. “along came the google and wiped the startups out”
i think some of these startups like having googlebucks thrown at em. going from bootstrapping to googleglory is probably a dream of many.

Google may get the Windows users on board, but Mac users already have a great presentation app. It’s called KeyNote and it’s awesome. I’ve been using my Mac more just because of it (I use Linux 99% of the time).

@29… I agree; “they’re” was all I saw when I read this. =P

“37signals in cahoots with Jeff Bezos and Amazon”

Just for the record, the deal we did with Jeff had nothing to do with Amazon. It was a personal investment from Jeff.

Regarding Google (or anyone else) buying 37signals: We’re not for sale.

The Enterprise space is a distraction for Google. They are a platform that mines Advertising $$. Not build software for SMB. They are trying to be all and this could signal that Google is running short of ideas.

Even if they make the software free and use Ads to bring in the $$ it is a far stretch from their core business.

Begs the question - WHY??

I’m obviously biased (see my link)…, but I do think that there are quite a few issues with using office apps via a browser based interface. All the way from very simple things like tabbing out of any editing situation, to more complex things like capability to build anything more complex than what you would create using notepad..
Powerpoint is interesting, and in fact its probably very amenable to collaboration, much more so than Word or Excel (IMHO). The collaborative data gathering approach using Excel is the only collaborative case for Excel that I can think of..
on the other hand, in Powerpoint, the slide is a logical unit of collaboration, reuse, etc. Furthermore, Powerpoint is dominant in sales collateral, training, and in a lot of many to many interaction scenarios.
I’m all for browser based stuff, and all that (typing this in Firefox on a Mac), but if you talk to the typical business user (dominant use is in business — what was the last time you did a presentation for your family?), you will find they are pretty set in their ways, and quite used to doing things with the office suite..

Therefore, our approach has been to bridge the gap between Powerpoint and web 2.0, rather than rebuild the same capabilities in a browser.

@jimmy:

I was just about to make a comment on that.

In fact i find it embarrasing that me as a non-native english speaker sometimes have to correct this kind of mistakes from people whose native language is english…

I agree with #52.

It’s great Google is building these software. I don’t see the SMB move fit into their corporate strategy.

Completely agree with #52.

Building the office Apps for SMB looks like a technology company searching for a problem…

Does Google want to get into the market of selling Apps?

They are missing project management to round out the suite. They should buy Projity’s Project-ON-Demand. I use the Google apps and have been frustrated they don’t listen this would be a tremendous addition. Maybe now they will listen and buy Projity !!!!!

Maybe they won’t sell it for now but get money through ads, but when it gets popular and the product gets stable then they may sell it. Just my guess. But on all accounts I think its Google stretching itself maybe in areas where it rather not like SMB.

I knew this was coming. It was a matter of when. Now everybody starts thinking very hard and each one of you will be able foreseen what’s Google next step in the Online Office Suite (OOS) resolution. Just made that up.

Actually the SMB thing for google makes a lot of sense. Regardless of the dominance of google in search, the smb market is much more sticky. Tomorrow people can move away from google’s search to some other search, but if a number of business have their information stored in Google, its a much more difficult proposition to migrate them away..
Interestingly, what makes business users sticky also prevents them from adopting new technologies. My take is that consumer adoption of google docs and spreadsheets is far higher than smb/enterprise adoption. And if you unbundled docs and spreadsheets from the gmail bundle, you’d see even less adoption..

How many typos in articles are we going to have comb through, Michael? Could you possibly have someone proof your posts before they go out?

Some products fit in well as well as online applications and other perhaps not so.

It seems to me that the fundamental nature of presentations change once you bring them online.

Google SaaS vs. Microsoft Desktop suite franchise makes a great story, but how many people are actually using word processors, spreadsheets and now presentation tools online? It would be great to see some numbers and validation.

I kind of agree with Vijay’s view

Excellent! Can’t wait to stop paying MS for such “commoditized” software like Office. Long life to (free) Google Office.

Michael,

This provides more insight on the technology -
http://www.indezine.com/blog/2.....iewer.html

That should explain the reasons.

Brij

TonicPoint Viewer is an application for viewing PowerPoint 97-2003 files, written in 100% Java. It will run on any platform with JRE 1.5 and is less than 1MB. It is free for non-commercial use.

As for why we developed it, some background is required… Our core business is our enterprise Java libraries. These are primarily used by other developers to create or modify PowerPoint presentations on the server-side. We also have a product which can convert PowerPoint into other formats such as PNG, PDF, SVG, and SWF.

All of that took a few years to develop because it required reverse-engineering the PowerPoint file format, which is probably the least well-known of all the office formats.

Along the way our developers created some tools for in-house use, including a simple viewer application. Because we do most of the development on non-Microsoft platforms, we found having a viewer very useful for testing, and it gave us the idea to release it as an end-user product.

google’s office suite adds “stickiness” (as some people have said) to their whole business. i tried to start using yahoo for search earlier this year, because i like their results interface better, and they seem to return better results for some queries.

within a week i had gone back to google, just because i was already on their site all the time for gmail, google reader, and google docs word processor. providing other services may not be a direct form of revenue, but it does funnel people toward their true revenue stream.

think of google docs as an advertisment for google search.

We use google docs/spreadsheets in our office all the time! It is a very helpful application and cant wait to see what they have next in store.

Let’s hope this adds a social aspect to static slideware.

This is all fuzz. In a not so far future there will be no difference between my desktop and a web application.

(I know this has been said already, but) How did you ever graduate from middle school without knowing the difference between there, their, and they’re? On a similar note, see this post regarding that tricky “who’s/whose” issue.

The content’s great, though. If only blogs were subject to copy editing…

“Schmidt also said that they’re[sic] office suite isn’t a threat to Microsoft.”

It’s “their”, not “they’re”.

Google guys are too clever to compete directly with MS Office. They want to create a disruptive technology. Initially disruptive products have different application domain than mainstream products. Mainstream products are usually too big and too expensive for disruptive products application domain.

That’s why they claim that Docs and Spreadsheet (plus their PowerPoint do not compete with MS Office. They really don’t want to.

I see this as Google management wishful thinking and first big mistake in their strategy. It is hard to find an application domain where MS Office, WordPad, OpenOffice are too expensive or too big.

Incumbent companies cannot integrate disruptive technologies into theirs products because their best clients don’t want that cheap but poor solutions. Yes, MS Office has no collaboration features. But MS Office clients will want that extension. There is no need to put whole MS Word into IE or FF just to synchronize documents when you press Enter.

Well, Eric Schmidt earns much more than me so I am probably wrong

What’s more annoying, a grammar mistake or 10 people pointing it out after it’s already been mentioned 5 times? The irony is hilarious, “Michael WTF, don’t you pay attention to detail?”

Try paying attention to detail yourselves dammit. Read the fricken comments before blurting something out. The winner (so far) is Frank at comment #70. But I’m sure lots of “they’re/their” corrections will follow even this comment.

/rant

I’d say the people pointing it out are more annoying.

I just noticed last night that gmail now integrates with writely. Someone sent me a .doc attachment and there was a link in the footer to open it as a google document. If you do, there is the option to collaboratively edit it online and to invite people to view/edit it.

Not sure what else offers this but I though it looked cool.

Wow!

I’d love to see Google’s new application soon. I already like Google Spreadsheet.

Cheers!

What Google is doing is called, d-i-v-e-r-s-i-f-i-c-a-t-i-o-n. Did it slip people’s minds that they are offering “Enterprise” for $50/user/year? They need to release this ppt-like product, and then add something comparable to Visio. Lastly, the ability to work offline would help seal_the_deal.

Does this mean that we can expect Jot to be integrated into Docs&Spreadsheets in the same timeframe as well?

Hi Michael,

I’m not sure if anyone mentioned that most of Jot.com’s tools haven’t been completely worked into this suite either…which I think would make this an extremely powerful tool for business’s Wiki/Spreadsheet/Presentations/Docs etc… I am hoping for the Jot integration soon…

I’d much rather have Google focus on improving some of their core functions before moving on to something like this. I’m a long time user of Gmail and Google Calendar, but those are not going to keep me a happy Google user when I have daily issues with AdSense.

GJ
http://www.60in3.com

Google is going to dominate alot of things;

- but to get a powerful product ; it can’t be simple.

- You have to have alot of options / thus not simple

- Google is the king of simple / not powerful

- “google search isnt powerful until you ad complicated Site: Link: Cache: -n ahd all the above additives”

http://web.archive.org/web/200.....stems.com/

thats what they do!

I thought SlideShare made a perfect fit for Online presentation. It is one cool online prez app that i have ever come across. Googe might just be scouting for this too.. . Check out more at : http://www.slideshare.net

>>

“They’re office suite”? Come, learn English my friend!!!

Maybe I’m the only one that heard this in the announcement at Web 2 Expo, but didn’t Eric say during the keynote that the presentation that was running in the background was using the new presentation product? I think it was a live demo that most people missed…

Where’s JOT SPOT?? Google acquired the wiki, cut off new accounts, and we’ve not heard a thing since. Will Jotspot wikit tie this all together in a nice neat package?

Um, Google Spreadsheets, like, blows.

Yeah. Yeah.

Google has done it again

Raj
http://technobuzz.net/

wonder when google will include a crm service in google apps premier…

isn’t a threat to Microsoft?

Word & Excel VS Docs & Spreadsheets
Outlook VS Gmail & Calendar
RoundTable VS Marratech
Live Messager VS Gtalk
……

I always love the google marketing spin that they are not a competitor to the Microsoft Office Software. Google Docs though is quite user friendly, and a lot simpler to use then the Online version of Microsoft word.

Markus from post 72,

I’ll raise you WiredMike on post 82…