Is Google’s Online Office Suite Good For Business?

By Greg McNevin

October 13th, 2006: Google has updated its online office productivity offering to include a spreadsheet program, but is its online suite really what businesses have been waiting for?

Through a single logon and shared interface, users can access Google’s word processor Writely and the new spreadsheet program.

“Did you ever notice that some things are just better together?” writes Jen Mazzon, Senior Product Marketing Manager on the Google blog. “For example, vanilla ice cream: on its own, it's good, but throw some strawberries or chocolate jimmies on it and all of a sudden you've got something truly tasty.”

Collaboration features and the fact documents can be accessed from any internet enabled terminal, look to be the most compelling reasons to use the new service, however, it is also easy to use and supports many popular file formats.

Google says that it accepts the most popular file formats such as OC, XLS, ODF, ODS, RTF, CSV for import and exporting and it can easily do all the basics like bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more.

Coupled with its email client and Writely, this release puts Google one step closer to having an office suite of its very own. But is it really competition to the Microsoft Office juggernaut?

Google may get a leg up on MS in online office productivity, however, just how many companies will really see its solution as a viable alternative to existing free products like OpenOffice.org? How many will discard established workflows, user training and archival methods and abandon MS Office after significant investments?

Currently, Google’s office suite is raising more questions that it is answering. Aside from usability issues, problems are immediately apparent in areas such as disaster recovery, compliance and privacy. There have already been cases of Google loosing its clients Gmail information, how safe are your documents on its servers? What happens if you get knocked offline while you’re working on something? Considering it’s a free service, how much effort will it put into service and support? What about legal discovery and archiving?

Just like its search engine records everything you jot in, when you use its online software Google’s mighty database logs your actions. The company says it records “information such as account activity (e.g., storage usage, number of log-ins, actions taken), data displayed or clicked on (e.g., UI elements, links), and other log information (e.g., browser type, IP address, date and time of access, cookie ID, referrer URL).”

Google stood its ground when other search engines folded to US Government requests, however, what the battle did do was highlight just how much information about users and their search habits is being stored by the search giants.

Sure it maintains it’s “don’t be evil” mantra, but as we saw with the storage of search data, Google’s drive to tailor its services has it breathing down your neck every time you click. How many companies want their intellectual property stored on someone else’s drives? How many want someone else keeping tabs on their employee activities? Or their own for that matter.

The service is definitely a step forward for Web 2.0 services, however, like Google’s scanning of private email to improve its advertising, its indifference to privacy and limited appeal do take the sheen off.

Google may have a new ice cream flavour on its hands, but it doesn’t look like it’s handing out spoons until it knows everyone’s secrets.

Google was not immediately available for comment.

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