Google Office Update

I have already talked about Google Office. Just two months later we have a brilliant integration of spreadsheets and documents (formerly Writely, redirecting now to http://docs.google.com). The suite may not be enterprise ready yet, but it surely does almost everything a typical consumer may want to do with document editor or a spreadsheet. We used to use an Open Office at home, but are migrating towards the Google Documents and Spreadsheets. The starting point for the service is a list of recently edited documents, sharing with family members and others is a no brainier (just enter an email address and that is it). And we are moving our picture library to http://picasaweb.google.com, although the sharing model within Picasa should be improved to match the overall security of the documents service.

Google Calendar has made some significant improvements in the meantime as well. What is especially important (and has been reflected in the recent blowout earnings report) are the international aspects of the Calendar service. I was really impressed when I saw the reminders could be delivered by SMSes and I could pick my local Polish operator from the list. Not every American company thinks this way, especially Yahoo is very US-centric and this again is reflected in the earnings.

Skeptics keep on saying Google Office will never find its way into the enterprise market, because businesses don't want to let their documents out to 3rd party servers. First, I do not agree with them, as keeping data at Google is nothing different from keeping money in the bank. Banks know how to secure our funds, so do professional providers of Internet services. Second, one can easily imagine a Google Search Appliance being transformed into a Google Enterprise Server (I wrote about it exactly a year ago, and it has almost happened).

The strategy is clear and the trend is clear. Money goes to the bank, nobody keeps dollars in socks at home. The same applies to digital data. Keeping it at home is simply unsafe. Disks do brake down and burglars hunt for computers. And as your money is fully accessible via the network of ATMs and credit cards, so will be your data, from any web-capable machine.