Google Announces One Less Reason to Export to Word
by John Paczkowski
Posted on April 1, 2008 at 12:00 AM PT
A recent sampling of U.S. PC users by research outfit NPD found that 73 percent had never even heard of Google Docs, the search sovereign’s collaborative word-processing tool, or any other online productivity applications, for that matter. That may soon change, thanks to an embellishment that adds offline access to what had been an exclusively online app. Over the next few weeks, Google (GOOG) will begin enabling offline access to Docs, via Gears – a browser plug-in that can store files and data locally. Soon, Docs users will be able to edit their documents in the cloud and on the desktop in the same application.
The availability of an offline component for Google Docs might not convince businesses to standardize on Google Apps, but it will undoubtedly get them thinking about it a bit more. Certainly, Docs’ lack of offline access has been one of the biggest objections to the Web-hosted application. Allowing Docs users to work on their word processing documents without an Internet connection, gives them one less reason to export them to Microsoft Word.
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