Living la vida Google

Wired News edi­tor Michael Calore spent a month using Google’s web appli­ca­tions instead of Microsoft Office. Over­all, it worked for him, but he had to jump through hoops to trans­late files for Microsoft users.

I’ve writ­ten about Google apps in my March 7 and Feb­ru­ary 23 posts. Web-based apps make sense for busi­nesses, as long as employ­ees have plenty of band­width and IT is aware of the secu­rity issues.

While Calore wasn’t able to use a Google pre­sen­ta­tion app in his exper­i­ment, Google is releas­ing one this sum­mer accord­ing to Google’s blog, eWeek and Wired News. It looks like Google’s slideshow app will import and save Pow­er­Point (PPT) files. Com­pat­i­bil­ity with the mar­ket leader is a key suc­cess factor.

I won’t miss Pow­er­Point at all.

I just hope TurnItIn.com and WebCT start sup­port­ing Google doc­u­ment for­mats soon.

Tagged as: Google, key-success-factors, ksf, mashup, Microsoft, office, software, usability, value-chain, WebCT