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Showing posts from February, 2008

Why Google Apps is a Serious Threat to Microsoft Office

This is the perspective of a “skeptical, later early adopter”; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don’t spend time on productivity tools that may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total breeze. I think Google Apps has reached that point. The significant advantage is collaboration. Since I started working on a new project where we all agreed to use Google Docs from the start, I have hardly used MS Office at all - even on other projects. The lead product in Google Apps for me is their word processing product - i.e. the MS Word alternative. That may be because I am a wordsmith, but also because it is the most mature. I still use Excel, as Google Spreadsheet is both a pain to learn and not good e