Google Docs: Will it be the “Office” killer?
In the blue corner...
Google Docs gets its advantage largely from being a hosted application over the Internet, to wit:
Easy file sharing and collaboration. If there is one salient feature of Google Docs that sets it apart, it is the ease of sharing documents among users and the equally effortless penning of an article by multiple authors. By simply clicking the “share” tab, indicating whom to share (members must have Google accounts themselves), and identifying whether they are viewer (read-only) or collaborator (read-write access), a document could be seen and edited by multiple hands, regardless where in the world, or which timezone, anyone might be, or any timezone. Google Docs handles the nasty synchronization problem, say Executive Tina and Executive Stephanie both save a different version of the file at the same time.
Revisions history. Google Docs keeps a history of all the revisions of the document by all users since the beginning. And better, if you went away for a much-needed tea break, giving your bundle of joy the opening to mess in your important document, Google Docs restores a file at 25 (at most) different save points. Revisions history works well with file sharing, if not a must, as it gives the users trail over what changes had been done on which file or document and by whom. Thus, in the case of a bad revision by any of the collaborators in a group, or worst, a file corruption in any one of the workstations (chance of this happening become higher as number of users increases), the team wouldn’t have to start from scratch.
One-click publishing. If sharing documents with a few selected people is easy, then publishing for the entire Internet community to see is even easier. After creating a document, a simple click on the “Publish Document” button in the Publish tab creates a page that shows the article. You have an option whether to host it via Google, or to publish it in your own Blogger account, Google’s very own blogging web application. It is apparent that Google knows how to leverage its affiliate services.
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