Google Announces Improvements to Google Docs at Google IO
by Brandon Chester on June 25, 2014 4:58 PM EST- Posted in
- Google IO
- Google Drive
Near the end of April I took a look at Google's new Docs and Sheets mobile applications that had been spun off of the Google Drive application. I felt that Google was really trying to create a separate brand for their office application suite. The main complaint about Google's applications has always been that they can't work with Microsoft Office file formats which are commonplace in the industry. In 2012 Google had acquired the office suite Quickoffice which did support editing Microsoft Office documents and it was hoped that the ability to do that would eventually be integrated with Google's Docs, Sheets, and Slides programs. Today at Google IO that is being realized as reality with Google announcing that their office applications now work seamlessly with Microsoft Office document formats.
Google has also finally released the long awaited Google Slides application for iOS and Android allowing users to create slideshow presentations from their smartphones and tablets. We'll be taking a look at the new Slides app on Android and iOS later today.
Google also took some time to talk about Google Drive in the workplace. Google Drive for Work provides enterprises with encryption for files both while in transit and when stored on their servers. Pricing for companies that switch to using Google Drive and Google Docs is just $10 per user per month for unlimited storage. Google has been successful in moving into the enterprise world with their cloud tools. They state that 67 of the top 100 startup companies are using the Google Drive platform, along with 58% of the fortune 500 companies and 72 of the top 100 universities. It will definitely be interesting to see how Google's cloud services and branding continues to evolve as time goes on.
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Wizzdo - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
Microsoft has made tremendous progress in the Office 365 suite compared to Google over the last few years. Google to this day, after years and year of complaints from Apps users, has done nothing to address the terrible lack of usable Contact sharing. Microsoft's offering, while still in need of work, is substantially better along with their support. Furthermore, unless you're in the USA, Google has completely ignored non-profits and education institutions. Users, again, have been asking for many years when Google will offer the similar benefits to non-profits and education in other countries only to hear "soon" but get nothing. Microsoft, on the other hand, is miles ahead in their offering world-wide. Google did away with the standard "free" version of GApps and in the meantime the early adopters are now being punished with a slow continual erosion of usefulness. Google's "Do no evil" should be changed to "Do no evil, but do no good either". If I were looking at a Cloud Suite for my company today, I'd be looking at Microsoft with Google near the bottom of the list. I used to be a big fan but have lost patience with a company that seems to ignore the critical needs of its users and put such little effort into supporting NGO's and Education (beyond the US).CSMR - Thursday, June 26, 2014 - link
Does "support" mean full, correct support of office documents, or just the ability to work with most of these documents without crashing.Given that Google's products, while exciting, are mostly beta quality, and the office documents specifications are very complex, I would expect it is the latter.
TheSlamma - Thursday, June 26, 2014 - link
I think he means picking up the phone and talking to someone on the other end. I can't even get a decent call to a sales team either.Sorry but throwing out numbers of top universities that use them doesn't mean it's a good product, uni's have classically used poor products
ruthan - Thursday, June 26, 2014 - link
Maybe time to upload some ultimate Excel sheets with lots of equation and VB scripts and see, beatifull crash :)Im using Zoho because of Google docs were everytime very limited, same as Office365 - it is still limited variant of desktop app.
brainsage - Tuesday, October 2, 2018 - link
It is clear that this is of practical value only for areas of a simple form, where the area and center of gravity are easily determined; for example, for a triangle, a regular polygon, a trapezoid. But this means that the generalized formula can be applied to domains bounded by a broken line, because such an area can always be used in Office 365 as well. Google Drive reviews by https://hireessaywriter.org/ seem to be overreactions of the users in 2018. They are planning to add still more features.