For all the talk Google Docs gets as being a potential “Microsoft Office Killer”, it has thus far lacked one crucial component: Offline access. That is going to change very soon as Robert Scoble learned today in a talk with Ken Norton, a product manager at Google (see the embedded video below). The talk was aired on Scoble’s Scobleizer TV show on FastCompany.tv.
Utilizing the web browser plug-in, Google Gears (currently available only for Internet Explorer and Firefox), users will now be able to access and edit their Google Documents when they are not connected to an Internet connection. This will work in the same way it currently works for Google Reader. Google Gears tells the application to download all the data it will need so that you can work without being connected to Google’s servers.
Interestingly, while you will be able to download Google Spreadsheets and Presentations as well, these will be read-only as The Last Podcast points out. This renders the new feature no more useful for these two types of documents than exporting to an external file (unless, I guess, if you have no access to any software that can view them).
Still, the offline access to word processing is a huge move toward Google legitimately challenging Microsoft’s Office suite. While most people are around an Internet connection most of the day, when you go on a trip and need to get work done in an area with no connection (such as a plane), offline support will alleviate a lot of users’ fears in leaving old, trusty Microsoft Word.
update: Google has more information on The Official Google Blog as well as the Official Google Docs Blog which notes that you can “bring the cloud with you.” The Google Gears support for Google Docs begins rolling out to selected users today and will continue over the next few weeks.
3 Comments
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Kaiyzen said:
Its not offline access that will catapult Google’s office offering to wide adoptance…, its trust from the enterprise space at a massive level that storing their docs on Google servers will not be a security or availability risk.
Before MS gives up on the office space.., which of course isnt going to happen, they will add a browser viewer/editor for Word. And if you are into the whole access offline, and have it available anywhere you go via the web, they already have that with Sharepoint.
Not sure if its true or not.., maybe someone can comment.., but I heard that Sharepoint is fastest growing product line of all time. Again.., dont know if that means increase in revenue or users.
I have played around with the Live Office/Sharepoint offering…, not fantastic…, but very usefull for easily sharing docs accross groups/locales. Think of it as a kind of source control for your biz files.
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Josh Carr Superstar said:
I am so tired of hearing this:
“Its not offline access that will catapult Google’s office offering to wide adoptance…, its trust from the enterprise space at a massive level that storing their docs on Google servers will not be a security or availability risk.”
Every time somebody post about google going after microsoft some late adopter who has never taken a risk has to jump on and make the same comment that he read somewhere else. I am sure your right but everyone knows that already so why say it again?
The bigger story is that google has taken several steps closer to the enterprise so far this year. Last week http://cemaphore.com announced the beta for “Mail Shadow Google apps edition” They are teaming up with gmail to sync an exchange server with gmail (or what they aren’t mentioning is that you can skip exchange all together) this is a big story that is happening so quietly Microsoft might actually miss it.
What do you do when you are a Enterprise IT guy and everyone in your organization has installed a little plugin to send all email, contacts and calendar items to a gmail account? You can embrace it or fight it…if you fight it you will probably lose anyway.
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MG Siegler said:
@kaiyzen - Yes, that is another point. Also yes, worth noting that while Google is coming down from the cloud - Microsoft is going up to it — as I written on before.
@josh - I did hear about the Gmail sync and believe that could be big as well.
