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Office suite is still the Adobe Photoshop of business software. Office is still deeply entrenched in businesses and holding on because it still offers the most

by snorkel 13y ago

Office suite is still the Adobe Photoshop of business software. Office is still deeply entrenched in businesses and holding on because it still offers the most features. For example, Excel vs. Google docs: you can do basic charts and graphs in Google docs, but clearly Excel has many more features, such as data analysis tools, and when you connect Excel to Microsoft SQL server you have reporting + data mart, where Google Apps offers nothing similar (not without a lot development work needed to set it up) Google Apps is good but often you still find businesses also need Office suite. If Google were to say, directly connect Google docs to a data warehouse tool such as Dremel, the add a lot of advanced data analysis features to Google docs, then things would start to get interesting.

leoedin 13y ago
Don't forget the millions, perhaps billions of dollars spent by organisations developing complex Excel/VBA based software. Short of copying to Docs every single Excel feature and quirk, there's no way Google can compete in that area. It will probably take a decade after everyone stops developing new software in Excel/VBA before organisations can think of moving away from it. Most large companies haven't stopped yet.
dvmmh 13y ago
Although true, Google is nibbling around the edges. There are a lot of edges. It's enough to put a crunch on M$.
ashayh 13y ago
Excel has vastly more features than Google Docs. At all the companies where I've worked at, I've never seen anyone use anything more advanced than a few basic functions. The _vast_ majority of users in a corporate environment use: 1> Font changes (color, size etc) 2> Images 3> Hyperlinks, ToC and other forms or document organization. It is silly to buy 1000 Desktop or Office 365 Excel licenses, when only 20 people will use a substantial amount of its features. More importantly, people are not emailing each other Office documents. I've seen companies who do _have_ google docs do it.
- notahacker 13y ago
  Sure the vast number of users use only a tiny fraction of the functionality, but many of them also [sometimes] need to open important files that someone has spent hours painstakingly making impossible to open in anything other than Excel. If I wasn't being emailed Office documents on a daily basis I'd assume my colleagues and clients didn't like me any more!
r00fus 13y ago
Google's goal isn't to replace Office. They just have to force Microsoft to reduce their margins, to refocus on Office as a product - if Google is lucky, Microsoft will pull a Win8/Surface (ie, total freak out) and abandon their main market to squash the "cloud" competition. If they're not, then customers win, at not that much cost to Google. Either way, Microsoft will see their unit margins drop. This is good business strategy for Google given their rivalry.

by snorkel 13y ago

leoedin 13y ago

Don't forget the millions, perhaps billions of dollars spent by organisations developing complex Excel/VBA based software. Short of copying to Docs every single Excel feature and quirk, there's no way Google can compete in that area. It will probably take a decade after everyone stops developing new software in Excel/VBA before organisations can think of moving away from it. Most large companies haven't stopped yet.

dvmmh 13y ago

Although true, Google is nibbling around the edges. There are a lot of edges. It's enough to put a crunch on M$.

ashayh 13y ago

Excel has vastly more features than Google Docs. At all the companies where I've worked at, I've never seen anyone use anything more advanced than a few basic functions. The _vast_ majority of users in a corporate environment use: 1> Font changes (color, size etc) 2> Images 3> Hyperlinks, ToC and other forms or document organization. It is silly to buy 1000 Desktop or Office 365 Excel licenses, when only 20 people will use a substantial amount of its features. More importantly, people are not emailing each other Office documents. I've seen companies who do _have_ google docs do it.

notahacker 13y ago
Sure the vast number of users use only a tiny fraction of the functionality, but many of them also [sometimes] need to open important files that someone has spent hours painstakingly making impossible to open in anything other than Excel. If I wasn't being emailed Office documents on a daily basis I'd assume my colleagues and clients didn't like me any more!

r00fus 13y ago

Google's goal isn't to replace Office. They just have to force Microsoft to reduce their margins, to refocus on Office as a product - if Google is lucky, Microsoft will pull a Win8/Surface (ie, total freak out) and abandon their main market to squash the "cloud" competition. If they're not, then customers win, at not that much cost to Google. Either way, Microsoft will see their unit margins drop. This is good business strategy for Google given their rivalry.