September 14, 2007

Google Presently Powerpoint Clone Could Be Days Away

Duncan Riley

45 comments »

Google’s long awaited Powerpoint clone could be days away from launching, according to a report at The Inquirer.

The service is said to be called “Presently” and is based in part on code from Zenter and Tonic Systems, two companies Google acquired earlier this year.

Presentations have long been the missing link in Google’s attempts to provide a full office suite that challenges market leader Microsoft Office. The Powerpoint clone was first rumored in February then confirmed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in April. More recently Google integrated Powerpoint viewing functionality into Gmail.

If a launch of Presently is coming shortly, the timing is perfect for Google, given that they have this week announced a deal with global consulting firm Capgemini to distribute their office package.

Sphere It

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September 14th, 2007 at 1:43 pm

Google Presently Set For Launch Next Week « iBrian

September 15th, 2007 at 12:58 am

pligg.com

September 17th, 2007 at 2:33 am

ThinkFree Blog » ThinkFree Show - Google Presently Comparison (sort of)

September 17th, 2007 at 4:28 pm

Comments

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Zoli Erdos

September 14th, 2007 at 5:28 am

Would they really be calling it Presently after killing off the Writely brand?

Why not stick to the friendly name of Google Docs & Spreasdheets & Presentations & Wiki
Musmon

September 14th, 2007 at 5:33 am

As usual google rulezzz!!! I cant wait to use it for my blog presentation as well

http://musmon.blogspot.com
moe

September 14th, 2007 at 5:47 am

I wonder if they’ll be sponsored ads in the slides…I can see it now… While giving a presentation the main competitors ads appear on the right side of the screen.
Darren Stuart

September 14th, 2007 at 5:51 am

yes it will be released at techcrunch 40.
Dominic

September 14th, 2007 at 5:53 am

People are fools to use all the Google crap. It’ better to pay for something which is without all their ads than to continue to tolerate this crap. Why trust these fools with everything in your life. Wake UP !
AndyBargery

September 14th, 2007 at 6:04 am

excellent, more ways for Google to find out who you are and present even more targeted advertising to you. As a marketer that is only good news. Although of course putting some pressure on Microsoft is never a bad thing..
Allen Stern

September 14th, 2007 at 6:17 am

Frankly, Presently is a horrible name. Google needs to stick to normal names, they are not a hip and cool web 2.0 type company. They have a market cap for g-d’s sake!
Bart

September 14th, 2007 at 6:31 am

Ads? What ads? I don’t see any ads unless I want to see them, and Google Apps is no exception. People here have no excuse for viewing ads involuntarily.
MeTheGeek

September 14th, 2007 at 7:06 am

This was announced officially by Sam Schillace on the Google blog, 4/17. They promised it for Summer.

With only 7 days left for summer, and if they are to keep their word, release is imminent.
MeTheGeek

September 14th, 2007 at 7:10 am

This is the link to the Google Blog post:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com.....cting.html
socialmd

September 14th, 2007 at 7:39 am

“is based in part on code from Zenter and Tonic Systems, two companies Google acquired earlier this year.”

Whatever happened to innovations at Google? They need to buy two companies to create a freaking copy of powerpoint!!!! At this rate, Zoho will have 100 apps in its suite by the time Google gets around to copying MS Office.
Amyloo

September 14th, 2007 at 7:56 am

All I want to know is: which syllable has the emphasis? PREsently? PreSENTly? Latter sounds more like a character.
Jeff Greco

September 14th, 2007 at 8:01 am

Darren Stuart’s right, I’d bet anything that this is what Google’s showing at TC40.
NotNow

September 14th, 2007 at 8:09 am

@MeTheGeek: They will release it and tag it as “beta” at the same time.
Fabian Schonholz

September 14th, 2007 at 8:13 am

I have a little problem, I totally believe in the ASP or SaaS model, but I have not been using services like Google. It is not that I do not like Google, but probably the fact that I find it a little incomplete a service. And not just Google. Having a presentation service available makes it more complete, but not complete enough. I want Google to succeed on these areas, but …

Turn the page …..

I have been using for the last week iWorks ‘08 and I am finding it fantastic. I am trying to be overly critical comparing it to MS Office for the Mac and … outside the fact that I am used to a different UI, I find iWorks way better. And the UI, it is more intuitive, thus, I do not see much of a transition.

Turn the page …. again.

So, what is the compelling argument to use Google’s service in the office productivity suite arena? Search and [BACKUPS] is not enough for me.
MeTheGeek

September 14th, 2007 at 8:27 am

@Fabian:

Search and backups could be enough for a lot of people. I like those attributes on the system. Plus, I like not needing an office suite on any of my computers, and use whatever (and whoever’s) computer I might have at hand to work.

You might like not to e-mail your documents around, and going mad with merging the different versions. One might enjoy not having to remember to load the documents on the pen-drive before leaving the office.
MeTheGeek

September 14th, 2007 at 8:30 am

@NotNow:

Ha! “Google Docs & Spreadsheets” is still beta. “Google Docs & Spreadsheets & Presentations” will just become a little more beta.
Zorba

September 14th, 2007 at 8:36 am

I have been using Zoho’s office suite and it rocks. Google are a little slow these days.
The question I have is when is Google going to start making money from all the spaghetti they are throwing against the wall.
In the past 6 months, the shares of blue chip company Gen Electric (GE) have outperformed high flying tech giant Google…..
SFMike

September 14th, 2007 at 9:09 am

OOOH! A PowerPoint clone! How exciting! Now if they could just come up with a Notepad clone I could do EVERYTHING on Google!
Avinash

September 14th, 2007 at 10:11 am

An online powerpoint application would be of great help to many. Eagerly awaiting its launch.
jccodez

September 14th, 2007 at 10:33 am

yawn..”presently”, i am not interested in using “add supported”, “un-supported” software to do my work….”presently”, I am willing to pay to use microsoft office to create presentations, documents, and spreadsheets.
Mitch

September 14th, 2007 at 10:34 am

If you really want another watered-down Office-lite webapp, by all means wait for google. If you’d like to check out a true rich internet application that can actually replace it’s desktop counterpart, please visit SlideRocket at http://www.sliderocket.com.
Anonymous CowHerd

September 14th, 2007 at 10:39 am

Few observations/opinions:

It is far cheaper, and thus business smart to build a product on top of, or at least with the help of existing code when such products already exist. If Google Had not purchased these other companies, it would have required everything to be written from scratch. Considering this has already been done on multiple fronts, it simply doesn’t make sense.

Google ads do not currently show up in Any google-assisted documents, spreadsheets or email. Suggesting that they will miraculously show up within slides is nothing short of FUD in its purest form.

Fake Steve, keep up the good work.
Steve

September 14th, 2007 at 10:44 am

Checkout Google’s terms or service on their apps. Put content into a Google doc and they can do essentially whatever they want with it. Gives me a nice warm and fuzzy.

http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS — Article 11.
Rajesh Shakya

September 14th, 2007 at 10:59 am

Zoho has got a very good Presentation suite already. If google does not offer the better product than the Zoho, Google will have not benefits just only showing its presence is every market.

Rajesh Shakya
http://www.rajeshshakya.com
vladbuk

September 14th, 2007 at 11:04 am

Interesting as Google and the application to work with the database will do?

—
http://networkforpeople.blogspot.com/
Sam Daams

September 14th, 2007 at 11:32 am

Ah, so this is the techcrunch presentation. That was too obvious! I think the iphone making it to the UK will make more headlines though
Peter S Magnusson

September 14th, 2007 at 11:54 am

I wish Google would clearly differentiate between applications that are naturally server-centric (search, news reader, email, calendar, todo lists, instant messaging, wiki, address books and contact management, disk backup, etc) and those that are naturally (high-end) client centric (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, etc). The web isn’t going to do the latter very well any time soon. And Google could do the former much better than they are today, if they focused on it.

For the latter group, I’ve tried iWorks ‘08; I’ve tried opensource apps; I’ve tried online apps; I’ve tried VM running various flavors of office. They all suck. I’m stuck waiting for Mac Office 2008 which will be out any year now …
fred

September 14th, 2007 at 2:22 pm

Fake Steve Balmer needs to be cancelled! What a dork trying to make money with such lame commentary and content!
Nag

September 14th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

Try preezo.com. Looks similar to MSFT. Simple and nice.

ZOHO is has lot of features but looks poor in usability. Hope they improve on their usability
Sridhar Vembu

September 14th, 2007 at 10:07 pm

@Nag, yes we are working on improving Zoho Show. Thanks for the feedback!

Sridhar
NotNow

September 15th, 2007 at 12:10 am

@MeTheGeek

GMail is still beta. That’s almost 3 years I believe?
Dominic

September 15th, 2007 at 6:12 am

Google still has things in Beta? Say it ain’t so.
al gore

September 15th, 2007 at 9:35 am

Whatever dudes… who really cares about Google’s powerpoint when MS gives PPT away for free.
Shams

September 15th, 2007 at 10:17 am

Everything has its own beauty. What yahoo mail could achieve till now gmail could not. MS Office is still the best. When Wiki will start to launch a search machine Google has to count days. It`s better to concentrate to reamin as a search engine. That`s my advice to google.
Yuri Ammosov

September 16th, 2007 at 2:45 am

Mitch: great product, but has a DNA error. It seems to assume presentation is about art and design. WRONG. Presentation is about structure and rhetorics. As to animations, they look cool but slide transitions have a known side effect - they piss off the audience to hell very soon. Take this into account when planing new release.
Mike

September 16th, 2007 at 6:38 am

SlideRocket isn’t just about art and design; it’s also got themes, layouts, templates, charts, tables, and all the tools necessary to succeed in business. It automatically creates a library of content as you work, so that you can share slides between your presentations. This is much quicker than copying and pasting between PowerPoint decks, and the slides are truly shared so that changes in one place are reflected everywhere. When you’re ready to present, you can do it offline in a conference room and online via a hosted meeting or a web link, with or without password protection and an expiration date.

Agreed that AJAX PowerPoint clones aren’t going to be able to keep up with SlideRocket’s art and design, but that’s just the icing on the cake. No one’s going to make you use the transitions if you don’t want to…
Annie Martel

September 16th, 2007 at 11:38 am

Eagerly awaiting presently, but PowerPoint 2007 new version is awesome.
Google need to work hard…
Dallas Freeman

September 16th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

I haven’t jumped on the band wagon for online apps yet, simply because they don’t have all the features I require. It is sooo much simpler for me to write straight into a Word document, rather then opening up an Internet browser, load up Google Docs, login, new file and finally start typing.

The biggest feature of online apps is the ability to collaborate, and share (at the same time). This is possible with Microsoft Office, it might be expensive and hard for individuals to setup but small/medium/large businesses could easily set it up for their use.

I think Microsoft need to start advertising their solutions about multi-user collaboration and sharing because it seems like not many people know they can do it with their Office applications already.
John

September 17th, 2007 at 10:25 am

The best online office suite currently out there is thinkfree.com.
jps

September 18th, 2007 at 12:12 am

I tried it first time today 18.9 - yesterday it was not available.
http://blog.jsihvo.com/index.p.....entations/