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Google is losing a lot of ground in the office productivity space. I can see Docs, Sheets and Slides being wound-down in the next few years as the distance betw

by nness 3y ago

Google is losing a lot of ground in the office productivity space. I can see Docs, Sheets and Slides being wound-down in the next few years as the distance between these tools and Office widens. The only advantage for the above tools is that they are vastly cheaper for an organisation that is already part of Google Workspace — than switching to Office. It is appealing for small businesses and start-ups, but not much else.

tayo42 3y ago
No way. Google docs seems so pervasive. I use spreadsheets and docs constantly in my day to day life outside of work. Isn't there a meme, like, the most important business decisions are made in the 1 inch column section of a Google doc. I never worked with office online though.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jahewson 3y ago
  How much do you pay Google to use docs?
  - tayo42 3y ago
    I assumed I paid them indirectly with my data like gmail haha
  - nness 3y ago
    Not sure why this is downvoted — its exactly the right question. Google has a hard fight ahead keeping its loss-leading services alive. At some point they will need to invest properly in their Workplace suite and start competing in the corporate productivity space — or, as I expect, risk being relegated to the small-business/home-user segment.
browningstreet 3y ago
I think the lack of a unified, platform integrated chat platform, a la Slack and Teams, will hurt a lot. They did great with Google Docs, and then built out a ridiculously complicated but robust Workspace Admin platform, but don't even seem to be thinking about chat anymore. Office, Office Web, and Teams are a nice fit for business users. Ops/dev still tend to gravitate towards Slack. Which makes their RCS complaints even more ...amusing (yes, I know it's not really the same space, or the same team, or the same platform -- but it is chat).
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  Google Chat apparently is a thing. It can be found in my companies gmail and we used it once, when slack was down.
  - buggeryorkshire 3y ago
    I just started a new job, and am amazed that even though being the sort of company that don't like spending money, like the previous 3 they have GW and Slack. Does anybody at Google do anything other than throw stuff over the wall then move on?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  The ironic/funny thing about your comment is that Google Workspace does have a pretty full featured chat platform, known as Google Chat. And it's clearly not dead (yet), because I just hit it on my account and get a nice pop-up, "Welcome to the new Chat", "Catch up with all your direct messages, group chats, and spaces - all in one place", and then get some walkthroughs on the new features related to the home screen, filters, etc. But I agree, Google product management for anything but search and ads is such a cluster-f of afterthoughts, side-of-the-desk work, and the impending feeling that it will all get shut down once whatever engineer championed it leaves or is promoted to something else. Also, a huge part of the entrenchment of Slack is all of its programmability and plugins - lots of companies run "ChatOps". I don't see any of that in Google Chat, and even if it were there I think you'd need to be crazy to actually develop a plugin for it before it likely gets shut down or is migrated to something else.
andrewnicolalde 3y ago
I really hope this doesn’t happen. The relative simplicity and reliability of Google docs in my experience has always been one of its major advantages over Microsoft Office, not to mention its near seamless real time collaboration functionality.
xnx 3y ago
> Google is losing a lot of ground in the office productivity space. What makes you think this? Google is huge in schools and universities. I can see Word being needed for specific advanced use cases (legal?) and Excel necessary for pro-level spreadsheet work, but for everyday business collaboration Google Workspace is fantastic.
- nness 3y ago
  It's the inter-connection of tools in the workspace. Microsoft is one short purchase of Mural or Miro away from having the complete ecosystem from documents, to meetings and calls, to whiteboarding all wrapped in a single package. They know that its the ecosystem that matters, not the individual tools. Multi-user editing is now table-stakes. And whilst applications, like Excel, still are behind Sheets in collaborative editing, its still functional.
dr_kiszonka 3y ago
Interesting. I really like Google Doc, Sheets, and Slides. Google keeps adding features, which I find to be very useful and innovative. I wish they updated Google Forms too. The only thing I am not a fan of is the AI features, which largely don't work for me.
wslh 3y ago
> I can see Docs, Sheets and Slides being wound-down in the next few years as the distance between these tools and Office widens. I don't think so at all. It is clear that there is a lot of brain power behind their products (e.g. the UI/UX in small mobile devices). The collaboration is excellent and much more powerful that the obvious competitor. If we talk about Jamboard it is clear that the app cannot go everywhere.

by nness 3y ago

tayo42 3y ago

No way. Google docs seems so pervasive. I use spreadsheets and docs constantly in my day to day life outside of work. Isn't there a meme, like, the most important business decisions are made in the 1 inch column section of a Google doc. I never worked with office online though.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jahewson 3y ago
How much do you pay Google to use docs?
- tayo42 3y ago
  I assumed I paid them indirectly with my data like gmail haha
- nness 3y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted — its exactly the right question. Google has a hard fight ahead keeping its loss-leading services alive. At some point they will need to invest properly in their Workplace suite and start competing in the corporate productivity space — or, as I expect, risk being relegated to the small-business/home-user segment.

browningstreet 3y ago

I think the lack of a unified, platform integrated chat platform, a la Slack and Teams, will hurt a lot. They did great with Google Docs, and then built out a ridiculously complicated but robust Workspace Admin platform, but don't even seem to be thinking about chat anymore. Office, Office Web, and Teams are a nice fit for business users. Ops/dev still tend to gravitate towards Slack. Which makes their RCS complaints even more ...amusing (yes, I know it's not really the same space, or the same team, or the same platform -- but it is chat).

Traubenfuchs 3y ago
Google Chat apparently is a thing. It can be found in my companies gmail and we used it once, when slack was down.
- buggeryorkshire 3y ago
  I just started a new job, and am amazed that even though being the sort of company that don't like spending money, like the previous 3 they have GW and Slack. Does anybody at Google do anything other than throw stuff over the wall then move on?
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
The ironic/funny thing about your comment is that Google Workspace does have a pretty full featured chat platform, known as Google Chat. And it's clearly not dead (yet), because I just hit it on my account and get a nice pop-up, "Welcome to the new Chat", "Catch up with all your direct messages, group chats, and spaces - all in one place", and then get some walkthroughs on the new features related to the home screen, filters, etc. But I agree, Google product management for anything but search and ads is such a cluster-f of afterthoughts, side-of-the-desk work, and the impending feeling that it will all get shut down once whatever engineer championed it leaves or is promoted to something else. Also, a huge part of the entrenchment of Slack is all of its programmability and plugins - lots of companies run "ChatOps". I don't see any of that in Google Chat, and even if it were there I think you'd need to be crazy to actually develop a plugin for it before it likely gets shut down or is migrated to something else.

andrewnicolalde 3y ago

I really hope this doesn’t happen. The relative simplicity and reliability of Google docs in my experience has always been one of its major advantages over Microsoft Office, not to mention its near seamless real time collaboration functionality.

xnx 3y ago

> Google is losing a lot of ground in the office productivity space. What makes you think this? Google is huge in schools and universities. I can see Word being needed for specific advanced use cases (legal?) and Excel necessary for pro-level spreadsheet work, but for everyday business collaboration Google Workspace is fantastic.

nness 3y ago
It's the inter-connection of tools in the workspace. Microsoft is one short purchase of Mural or Miro away from having the complete ecosystem from documents, to meetings and calls, to whiteboarding all wrapped in a single package. They know that its the ecosystem that matters, not the individual tools. Multi-user editing is now table-stakes. And whilst applications, like Excel, still are behind Sheets in collaborative editing, its still functional.

dr_kiszonka 3y ago

Interesting. I really like Google Doc, Sheets, and Slides. Google keeps adding features, which I find to be very useful and innovative. I wish they updated Google Forms too. The only thing I am not a fan of is the AI features, which largely don't work for me.

wslh 3y ago

> I can see Docs, Sheets and Slides being wound-down in the next few years as the distance between these tools and Office widens. I don't think so at all. It is clear that there is a lot of brain power behind their products (e.g. the UI/UX in small mobile devices). The collaboration is excellent and much more powerful that the obvious competitor. If we talk about Jamboard it is clear that the app cannot go everywhere.