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SIGDOC Newsletter
December 2006 :: Volume 7, Number 4
Interesting Items
Google Docs: Yes, It's a Big Deal for Professional Writers by Clay Spinuzzi
Google Docs: Yes, It's a Big Deal for Professional
Writers
Over the past few years, Google has been methodically developing a suite
of free, lightweight web-based office applications: an email client (Google
Mail), a calendaring application (Google
Calendar), a web development
tool (Google
Page Creator), an instant messenger (Google
Talk), and
more recently, a word processor and spreadsheet (recently unified under
Google Docs, based on Writely and Google Spreadsheets). Many of these
products come fairly late to their market niche, and some are not necessarily
best-of-breed. Certainly most of these -- particularly Google Docs --
are stripped-down compared to their more robust desktop competitors.
So what's the news here? In particular, is Google Docs going to be significant
or not?
Some industry analysts are saying not. According to Beta
News, Jupiter Research analysts think that Google Docs doesn't
have the legs to compete in this crowded -- and overwhelmingly Microsoft-dominated
-- marketplace. Maybe, they say, it's not really supposed to: "Google
is just playing with Microsoft's (hive) mind. Scaring the troops. Sleight-of-handing
the managers," Jupiter analyst David Card is quoted as saying
in the article.
But -- bluntly speaking -- Card is wrong. Google Docs
is a big deal, especially for small businesses, sole proprietors,
and contractors, but
also for educators like myself, for three reasons.
- Google's products are not meant to compete with MS Office in any
company that has or can afford an IT manager. They are small-scale
and meant to replace apps that have not been successfully monetized,
like MS Works. Those apps don't have much traction among large corporations,
which use more obscure Office features, but they would be just fine
for small businesses and some education contexts -- the segments that
Google is clearly trying to address. There's a tremendous amount of
money to be made in these segments, but -- especially in small businesses
-- nobody's been able to figure out how to extract it, which is why
MS Office is targeted to the large company environment. Google has
figured it out.
- Google has figured it out in part because its products have addressed
the key issue faced by small businesses in an increasingly networked
environment (and I mean economically networked, not just IT-networked):
easy collaboration, sharing, and version control. It's built collaboration,
permissions, tagging, and version control into these products in a
way that just can't be done on a desktop. This is a huge deal, since
we're increasingly collaborating across organizational lines; 37Signals'
collaborative project management system Basecamp is Patient Zero here.
Microsoft gets it, which is why it's putting together its own online
office offering.
- Finally, Google is continuing to integrate its products, of which
Docs is only a small part. For instance, if you receive an Excel spreadsheet
as an attachment in Google Mail, you have the option to open it in
Google Docs. (That option is not available for Word documents yet,
but that's just a matter of time.) Since these applications are web-based,
new features continue to be rolled out.
In fact, Google will almost certainly continue integrating these services.
I predict the following services, or something like them:
- Searching across all your Google apps. Email, calendar, documents,
etc. all from one search box. This is half of what could turn these
apps into a well integrated system for managing projects.
- Tagging across all your Google apps. This is the other half.
- Full integration with versioning across all applications. For instance,
if you reread your email from six months ago, perhaps you could see
not just the link to the document at that time, but also a link to
the version history. This would allow you to see the document in context,
just as Google Mail's interface allows you to see your conversations
in context.
- SMS alerts, email alerts, and RSS for documents, integrated
through Google Mail and Google Reader.
You'll know when a document has been changed.
- Calendared changes. With integration from Google Calendar, you could
set documents to publish or change versions at a particular time. Think
press releases and product deadlines.
- Permissions pegged to tags. Tag a document to a particular project,
and everyone in that project has permission to see it.
- Appended comments, again like Writeboard or Blogger.
But does Google Docs really work well enough to deliver on its promise?
Since Google Docs came out, I've used it in three collaborative grant
proposals and many small writing tasks. I've also had students use it
for collaborative projects. Although I miss some of the features of Microsoft
Office, particularly some of the formatting options, it's surprising
how little I use them. And the ability to share, collaborate, and comment
on documents is so useful I suddenly am not sure how we got along without
it.
Clay Spinuzzi
Associate Professor
Director, Computer Writing and Research Lab
University of Texas at Austin
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