Google has officially launched the missing piece in Google’s online office suite: Presently, a presentation product that competes directly with Microsoft PowerPoint.
We’ve know it’s been coming for a long time, the PowerPoint competitor was first rumored in February then confirmed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in April. More recently Google integrated PowerPoint viewing functionality into Gmail. and last week we posted on reports that it would be launched “within days.” I didn’t know it at the time, but the official launch is TechCrunch 40 but the site is live now.
First impressions: it depends on what you like when interacting with Office packages. I’ve become a big fan of Google Office products due to their simplicity and most importantly their online collaboration features. I’ve complete abandoned using Microsoft Office altogether, but I do have NeoOffice installed for offline usage (mostly when flying). Presently doesn’t have all the bells and whistles PowerPoint has, but that’s in part the appeal. Anyone who has used the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon is able to explain their frustration at what at first is a bizarre interface that takes a fair bit of learning. Presently, like Docs and Spreadsheets before it is straight to the point.
Is Presently the Microsoft killer many are hoping it will be? Perhaps not yet, because Google still has work to do in breaking into the corporate marketplace, which we know they are doing with their Capgemini deal. For the rest of us, for all bar perhaps intensive presentations, Presently makes a great PowerPoint compatible tool, and at $0 it comes at the best price of all: free.
As of now, Google has also renamed Google Docs and Spreedsheets to simply Google Docs.
google >>> microsoft
Google again goes one step further into taking over the world.
Microsoft here we come………..
Google Presentation is very cool. I was surprised to see this. I was just checking my google documents, and just found it.
I should say the features are grater than
Preezo.com
and less than Zoho.
An Online multi-lingual office suite would definitely be out soon too…
wonder if an acquisition of a co. like SlideShare would make sense in the long run too?
Google really distills an app. down to its essential pieces which I think most average users need, and understand how to use. Google docs is good, but not spectacular – for most however; it is probably good enough. Free is free.
On the one hand I see people saying that they have replaced Microsoft Office but on the other hand I see important features missing from Google Office. Things like page headers and footers on Google docs as well as page numbers are important features that are missing. What important features have been ommitted from Presently?
The problem as I see it is that there is no innovation. As much as Microsoft annoys me, they have developed the Office interface. All Google has done is copy a subset of it and put it online. Why not try to reinvent these apps, rather than give us the same old tired look?
hmmm…this looks like they used this formula:
writely – paragraph styles – export to pdf – word count – find/replace + 15 page themes + duplicate slide + save as zip + delete/duplicate slide + presentation view = presently
one could argue that google has synthesized powerpoint to its most crucial features…but since i can’t create a box or draw an arrow, i’m not sure this thing is more that a word processor with a viewer.
Jack I totally agree. If all you can do is insert text and images, it’s not so much a PPT replacement, but a MS Front Page Killer. Oh wait, that’s not as sexy sounding.
GEngineer: But, Google Page Creator does almost exactly the same stuff as that presenter thing: You can create new pages(slides), edit text, choose fonts, bulleting, and insert images. You can even choose background colors!
PR: People -want- to believe this is a ppt killer, so we will just say it is. Name it accordingly and people will believe. Remember, they -want- to believe.
Andrew,
I don’t think they need to innovate in terms of the product, the key is in the delivery, ease of use and most importantly the price point.
I was expecting a real-time teleconference function, that allow people at on end “seeing” slide-show as one presenting at the other end.
Google seem to have this build-in, with the panel on the right, but I just can’t get it work.
Also totally agree with Jack, a real presentation program need animation, and drawing tools. Until then, I still stick with MS PPT
I give Adrew right – Microsoft made most innovations with its Office products, so that google has nothing else than to copy it (mostly interface & workflow). I personally don’t like google presently (nor the whole gOffice), because of its lack of features. Yes, for a simply online presentation it may be OK, but not for a real office replacement in the enterprises.
step by step.. the power is google !
Did anyone other than Google call it something other than ‘Google Docs’ in the first place?
I am sorry, but having acquired not one, but two web-based presentation tool players over the last year, this was a really lackluster product launch. Nothing was done to really create a competitive solution. I do love and use Google Apps, and the word processor and spreadsheet, while spartan, struck the right balance of “minimum functionality to be useful yet not be an AJAX nightmare”. This time, they missed the mark. I might use this is a dire emergence, but not for real presentation work. I am disappointed. I think perhaps ThinkFree is closest to the mark in the web-based presentation tool category, but, even there, the first-time install process is pretty scarey for a consumer offering.
I sware google has been outdone by Preezo, those fools will be acquired ASAP.
Not hard to achieve “ease of use” with virtually no features. Wait until they start adding features.
Presently versus PowerPoint. How appropriate: a name denoting relevance versus a name denoting politics.
It’s funny but I called this out couple months ago. Here’s the actual post about it: http://tech.kar...s-spreadsheets/
Seems more like a competitor of sorts to Webex or Netmeeting. I don’t see a way to run presentation offline.
Wow. As far as I can tell, this release has none of the Zenter functionality rolled into it and looks identical to something I saw months ago. It has the least amount of functionality in any available online presentation app.
Check out SlideRocket if you want to see a true rich internet presentation app…
http://www.sliderocket.com
Given that they bought not one but *two* companies working on a web-based powerpoint, this seems pretty feature-sparse. I wonder why?
And where’s their damn wiki product? It’s been nearly a year since they bought Jot, and that’s the one I’ve been waiting for.
I tried it and was able to build a simple presentation, with lists and images, within 5 minutes. I started the slideshow, emailed the link to myself and opened it on another computer, and was able to follow the remote presentation perfectly.
I have been working in product marketing for 15 years, and give a powerpoint presentation close to every day. The majority of those presentations have remote users. This product did everything I needed, easily.
For those of you complaining about animations, you do realize that the remote presentation products such as webex don’t let you show animations remotely, right?
Waah waaah waaaah, bitch bitch bitch. This product is excellent and extremely useful.
Wow. Several observations:
1) Duncan’s obsequious Google love has really reached a breaking point. Please. Stop. Now. I now firmly believe that you are a Google employee or have significant amounts of Google stock, and desperately need the company’s stock price to go up to pay off some loan.
2) Presently presently has *less* functionality now than it did when Google bought it. If that’s progress or innovation, I’ve got a wheel to sell you.
3) Anyone who thinks that Google has “distilled the core” of PowerPoint does not do office presentations. Right now, Presently is just *WORDPAD* with multiple screens.
Presentations *visually fortify* the ideas presented. If you want a bulleted list on the screen, you can just give people a handout. The whole point of using a presentation (a la PowerPoint) is that animations, graphical objects, transitions describe, exemplify, or emphasize the connections and relationships between ideas/steps/etc.
4) If you’re using remote presentations, you’re a) wasting your time and b) wasting the time of your audience.
Finally!
Now if they would just build a Google Doc’s App for my blackberry….
lol – the positive is that Google is all-powerful and can gain reach due to their reputation quickly, negative part — People stay firm in their actions and like to stick with products they know. I hate Microsoft Office, but the business world and most of the population only thinks of PowerPoint…Powerpoint has become a definition, Google will have to create a machine to beat tradition.
Look at Keynote….Great product, but only the most savvy mac users know of it, even if Keynote may just be installed on their new macs be default…People don’t think around their box =oP
I was expecting much more form them, as I did with Google Docs. The product is OK, not something I would “become a big fan of ” On the other hand I really think Duncan review is really vitiated, for some reason it sounded as propaganda… free obviously.
I thought this would be more robust
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have any capability to export to powerpoint or openoffice. If they want any kind of corporate adoption, they’ll need interoperability with these offline standard apps.
I completely agree with most of you, Google is easy to use because it has little functionality. Might be good for some, and bad for others.
I am impressed because we have currently released the first pre-alpha version of our really-open-source web office with presentation editor+player. And you can easily verify its functionality is small steps away from Google’s !!!
I expected more from such a big corporation … but I also think that releasing Betas and adding functionality one by one has been working quite well for them.
The look and feel is gorgious. Apart from Opengoo, any other opens source alternatives anyone could recommend?
I just read your article on IBM and the renewed attack on the Office monopoly. Do you have time to chat ? Projity has a unique software property with a complete replacement for Microsoft Office’s Project, delivered both as a SaaS or desktop solution. IBM, Google, Sun, Novell and soon Yahoo are offering alternatives to the Office Suite. However, none have an answer to Microsoft Project. Projity’s solution is unique and very important as 7% of all Office desktops have Project, drives $1 billion in revenue, top profit margin sku and a key for future success of all Microsoft business applications. There is a tremendous domain expertise required which insulated Microsoft from any open source or SaaS competition until now.
Projity open sourced OpenProj and the response has been tremendous, averaging a download every 23 seconds around the clock and will hit 100,000 downloads in the first full month and are already in 130 countries. In the first month they have English, French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Russian and Chinese versions. OpenProj is a complete replacement, even opening existing native Microsoft files and is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. This is valuable for IBM, Sun, Google, Novell and others looking to offer alternatives to the Office suite, with Projity there is a complete alternative suite of applications. This is big news and another front in the Microsoft war…. I use Google Apps with Projity’s SaaS solution and will never look back !