Who would have thought that "organizing all the world's information" could cover so much ground? In following its mission statement, Google has become much more than a search engine. This means it ends up competing with many companies on battlegrounds other than search. This article talks about Google's updates to Google Docs, a product that has more in common with Microsoft's Word than the company's own search engine.
These days it seems as if Google is content to make enemies by stepping into other's territory without much of an apology. The latest example of this was in 2009 when Google Docs was taken out of Beta and widely released. In a very short amount of time, Google Docs has managed to become both a smash hit and a major rival to Microsoft Word.
Aside from having the huge advantage of being free (Microsoft Office, and specifically Word in this case, is quite expensive), Google Docs also comes equipped with many--if not all--of the same features as Word. We can’t dismiss the service’s non-existent price tag too quickly, though, because it’s something that not only sets it apart from Microsoft, but it also sets it apart from other document sharing services, which usually require users to pay a fee. Not only that, but Google Docs also has the added benefit of combining the features of Writely and Spreadsheets, essentially acting as a web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service.
Users can now even collaborate in real-time with other users using the service. The collaboration features available in Google Docs may make this software suite a far more powerful tool than is Microsoft Office. Obviously, Microsoft now has some stiff competition, especially after Google unveiled new versions of Google Docs this past April. First, let’s discuss some of Google Doc’s most basic, initial features.
Google Docs Features
Google Docs is part of a growing series of free products called “software as a service,” which are usually characterized by being online versions of similar office suites. With Google Docs in particular, spreadsheets, documents, presentations, and forms can be created within the app, and can then be imported using the web or sent using e-mail.
This wouldn’t be a very useful service unless the documents could be saved to a user’s computer, and in the case of Google Docs, users can save their documents in a variety of formats, including ODF, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, and Word. When saving these documents, they’re also saved to Google servers. This is quite helpful, because open documents are automatically saved in order to prevent the user from losing any data. Even more useful, the revision history of the document being made is kept on record as well.
The free Google Docs service is very big on organization, which is why it enables users to tag and archive their documents no matter what browser they’re using, as it supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and browsers running on Windows, Apple OS X, and Linux. The only downfall, if it could even be called that, is that Google limits how much users can store on their account. Currently, Google Doc users can store 5,000 documents or presentations, 5,000 images, 1,000 spreadsheets, and 100 PDFs. They are limits, but they’re not too shabby, and most likely far exceed the amount of documents and images the average person needs. Single documents cannot exceed 1 GB and as of January, spreadsheets are limited to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, and 99 sheets, and embedded images can’t exceed 2 MB each.
The last feature outlined here is perhaps the coolest, as it enables users and non-users to collaborate in the editing of a document in real-time online. More specifically, multiple users can share, open, and edit documents at the same time, and in the case of spreadsheets, all users participating in the editing process will be notified by e-mail of any changes made to the document.
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