Google Launches Plugin That Fuses Microsoft Office With Google Docs | Hacker News Reader

Google Launches Plugin That Fuses Microsoft Office With Google Docs

techcrunch.com

147 pointsssclafani41 comments

If you upload a complex Word document to Google Docs, Google will make some simplifications to the document.

How does this manage the mis-match between Office and Google features? What if I do something in Office that cannot be synced to Google Docs? Surely all this passing through Google Docs will strip the Word-specific formatting out?

I think it's a great step, but it's not going to be anywhere near WYSIWYG.

I tried to address this in the article, but it's a little confusing.

If you and a coworker are both editing a document using native versions of Office, then the changes should sync seamlessly.

If you create a document using Office, then sync to the cloud, then edit that document using a Google Docs web-based editor, it should look right, but there may be some fidelity issues. However, any changes you make WILL NOT be saved to the version of the document that was originally created in Office. You can still save this as an Office Doc using the export feature, but it breaks the syncing.

This is how this cloud thing is supposed to work. Microsoft please note this.

http://skydrive.live.com ?

Doesn't it already work this way? Specifically, I can create and edit office documents using Microsoft's web-based editors, and then open the documents in my local editors and when I hit save they save back to "the cloud."

What else needs to happen?

I give props to MS for its progression, but MS's web-based editors just can't compare to Google's. Some of them require Silverlight plugin. Also, its word-processing editor cannot do concurrent editing in its web app.

Also, this is surreal, but if the documentation is to be believed, this new Google plugin supports more versions of MS Office than MS's own cloud apps do.

> Some of them require Silverlight plugin.

Silverlight will improve the experience, but is not a requirement.

> this new Google plugin supports more versions of MS Office than MS's own cloud apps do.

It's a mixed bag. Office 2003/2007 can't save to Skydrive, but this Google plug-in can't do document co-authoring (the merge story with this plug-in isn't pretty).

It's opinion, of course; I use MS's web-based editors quite a lot, and they work well for me. I almost always have access to the local client software, too, so most of the time it doesn't even really matter; skydrive is just a great cloud-storage thingy for my documents. For the times I don't have a copy of office on the machine, the web editors are fine.

I haven't yet run into the concurrent editing problem, but it may well be a showstopper for some features. For note-taking (which is the common case I can think of), OneNote is arguably a better choice, and it supports concurrent editing.

It's Microsoft, so you must ignore it... until Google or Apple does it.

The two things MS doesn't do is versioning and conflict management.

SkyDrive saves old versions of your Office documents, though this is perhaps not as discoverable as it ought to be.

Not sure what you mean by conflict management--in general, unless you have full coauthoring support (the Office Web Apps have partial support: OneNote and Excel support it on the web, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote support it in the client) it doesn't make much sense to have a 'conflict resolution' story.

(Disclosure: I work on some of this stuff.)

You need to purchase a version of office that supports skydrive.

Well, they're getting closer. But:

If you save a document from Powerpoint to Google Docs, and then edit that file using the Google Docs web editor, you will not be able to sync those changes back with the native version of the file.

One thing the web version of Office does better than Docs is most definitely Powerpoint slides. While the interface for making presentations in Docs is impressive by web standards, there's so many things that I routinely need that I can't get in Docs that making presentations there is pretty much a nonstarter.

This is probably the best thing from Google in a long time.

What about Google Voice? Launched in 2009. Guess it depends on your definition of a long time.

Google Voice is about half a product in my opinion. Once they actually integrate VOIP calling on my mobile I'll agree.

Also support for those outside the USA (I'm aware of why it's taking a while, I'd still like to use it though).

I don't really count things bought by Google as being "from" Google.

"Once you’ve installed it, you’ll notice a new ribbon toward the top of the Office UI, which gives you a Google Docs link for the document you’re currently working on..."

Does anyone care about screen real-estate anymore? :(

FWIW, the Office Ribbon scales UI pretty well (considering how much stuff is on there). I haven't tried it, but I imagine that it's just another tab on the ribbon.

Bonus points if the tab only shows up when you're working on a document saved to Google Docs.

Excellent, a built in internet-backup. Perhaps this could affect companies that offer cloud-based backup solutions?

Great news! Hopefully not too off-topic but doesnt "Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office" sound like such a Microsoft name? It's just missing 'Live' or something to make it complete.

In my opinion, if you're creating software that's living inside someone else's software it's easier for users (and to some extent it's polite) if you follow the parent software's approaches and style.

No Office for Mac support :(

This seems odd. Didn't Google ban the use of Windows by their employees awhile back?

Why would that matter? The largest single part of the market is Office for Windows, so that's what they targeted first. Google employees are likely using Google Docs for most things, anyways.

I was looking into this a while back, and I'm curious: does anybody know whether it's even possible to develop a sophisticated add-in for Mac Office? MS added VBA support back to Mac Office 2011, but VBA can only do so much. On Windows, sophisticated Office plug-ins are typically COM add-ins, which can be implemented in C++ or .NET and thus can pretty much do anything you want. Those are obviously not cross-platform, though. I believe Mac Office also supports AppleScript, but it's not clear to me whether that's any more powerful than VBA.

I'm sure they have some Windows installations around for Chrome and web compatibility testing. I wonder would happen to Google if they only made products for Google employees.

Link to Google's official announcement: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/11/bridge-to-cloud...

Only supports Windows unfortunately. Actually I've been moving more and more to not using Office and going straight into Google Docs, but there are times when Office is still better. Hope they create a Mac one soon

I really hope that somebody gets around to implementing a grammar checker in their document editing tool at the level of Office. I don't use it terribly often, but I notice it when it's not there in competing products.

So the web app/client is not The client that rules them all. Native client does have its place and is growing without a doubt.

This is pretty slick and too bad I don't use Word anymore. That said, besides the obvious PR hit that Microsoft takes with this kind of stuff I'm unsure how many people will be using this. People on this site who use Word might, but the everyday users of Microsoft products won't even know this exists.

Cool. But in my opinion, what matter the most is the conversion of files between Office and Google Docs. As a student (who have to submit paper in .doc or .docx), I have to buy Office because I can't be sure that the conversion will be fidel enough.

In my opinion all office apps will suck until they agree on something. Even different versions of the same office suite cannot work together,

Is there something similar for OpenOffice?

This http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd which in my experience is a bit pants.

Sorry, I forget: does "pants" mean "good" or "bad"? I know I've heard it before.

Depends on the context. If you're saying something that's meant to impliy a positive connotation then it means something good. Otherwise its bad. That's how I differentiate.

I've never heard it used in a positive way. I certainly meant it negatively here.

So it's an intensifier?

Thanks.

This is certainly a good news for both Microsoft and Google.

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