For a very long time, Google has focused on building its own productivity software to serve everyone from consumers to massive enterprises, and then locking people into its core experience. That all changed on Wednesday.
Google is using third parties to make its productivity apps more useful on Android. The company announced Thursday that it's now possible to bring functionality from apps like Scanbot, DocuSign and ProsperWorks into Docs and Sheets on its mobile operating system.
Google isn't kidding when it says it's serious about the enterprise. The company announced a pair of new services on Monday that are aimed squarely at helping businesses access information and share it internally, similar to what Microsoft's SharePoint product offers.
Google is updating the developer tools for its Docs productivity suite in an effort to make it easier for companies to integrate with its presentation, spreadsheet and word processing software.
Google is trying to save presentation audiences from having to sit through long rambling questions with a new feature it added to its Slides software on Wednesday.
Google Docs is becoming a more robust cloud-based productivity suite, and the addition of uploading, storing and viewing videos is a boon for sharing corporate presentations and the like. It's also a slick way to skirt your company's firewall on streaming video sites such as YouTube.
I'm looking forward to <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Microsoft+Corporation.html">Microsoft</a>'s <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/168277/office_2010_most_innovations_are_online.html?tk=rel_news">browser-based edition of Office</a>. While the company isn't leading the trend to cloud-based apps, it's certainly in the middle of the movement. Microsoft's suite will be released next year, but you can save money by accessing online office-style apps right now. In-browser productivity suites are typically free. Plus, I like them for lightweight systems, such as netbooks, where Microsoft's desktop suite feels too bloated for even typing.
The future may be the cloud, but it also may be Microsoft that ushers us into that realm of possibility and imagination. Today, Redmond unveiled as a part of Office 2010 a suite of Microsoft Office Web apps that will compete directly with Google Docs. While Microsoft isn't letting anyone play around with the apps just yet, on paper, Microsoft's Web apps look like they could blow Google's online services out of the water -- beta or no beta.
