Google Sites, the search sovereign’s creatively named collaborative Web-site building service, is now available to any registered Google (GOOG) user, not just those with Google Apps accounts. No HTML required. No fees, either. It’s like GeoCities or TheGlobe.com without the massive quarterly losses …
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.
In terms of Google, not to overstate it, but they really don’t understand the special needs of business. Today, their economic model is based on consumer search. They have done an incredible job there and obviously we’re investing in challenging them in that space. … If you’ve seen … the Google tools that have tried to do productivity type things, they really don’t have the richness, the responsiveness. You can see that relative [to] the success they have had there. Most of these Google products, to be frank, the day they announce them is their best day and then after that …”
–Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pans Google Apps
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
in 80 milliseconds
We sat next to each other in math. We didn’t get on, remember? Want to be my friend?
PRO TIP: You can create an effective diversion using sheep or cattle brains.
Just killed one inside. Pics for proof. This is insane.
With antlers on a headband
The Death Star over San Francisco
Inferring personality from email addresses
A lifetime of CNN in two minutes
With Apple CEO Steve Jobs sitting in for the lovable tiger …
“I clicked ‘buy’ thinking it was a joke.”
