Google makes Quickoffice for Android and iOS free for all
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
Anything in particular I'm missing?
I don't think of it as an "office app" at all, and it would frankly kind of bizarre to have to use QuickOffice to get at the various tar files, html files, image files, etc, that I've put into G.D....
If anything they should really just share components, with Google Drive invoking Q.O. document editors as appropriate, and maybe a Q.O. app remaining as a thin "office-oriented" frontend (whatever that means).
Obviously Google would remove that feature as they now own Quickoffice, I would have been FAR more surprised if they kept it in.
Edit: it's me or Quickoffice is complete crap? I tried opening a document in Google Docs and it opens as PDF! then I created a new document and it doesn't have headings, just like the Google Drive application.
It's working fine for me, .doc/.docx extensions open in QuickWord as expected.
Reading the basic description of what an app is is not equivalent to reading a manual.
QuickOffice was always a MSOffice formats editing tool for mobile devices. Its never been a generic document reader. You assumed, for no discernable reason, that it was.
Maybe you should re-evaluate your assumptions about the need to read descriptions of apps before you install and run them.
Let me speculate what would happen if Google applied your thinking:
- You could not integrate Google Adwords with Google Analytics because there were part of different companies.
- Android could not integrate with Google Search Engine because it was only part of a mobile innitiative.
You can play yourself combining the acquisitions listed on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...
Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.
"No no no, if it's a Word file you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green circle to edit it, if it's a native google document you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green hexagon to edit it."
"You don't know what type of document it is? No problem, you can tell by... Open it up in one of the two apps and tell me what the file extension is. The file extension. The three of four letters at the end. Wait a sec, forget that, native google docs documents don't have file extensions."
["Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square." - I was wrong about this, word files do have a different icon]
"Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one."
"Hold on, I'll drive over..."
"If you need to edit things in Drive, use the Drive app."
There are some use cases where the QO app makes sense, but its solving a fairly narrow problem that doesn't apply to most users.
> Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square
What are you talking about? The icon for Word files in both the QO UI and the Drive app UI is a big blue W on a white square, and is nothing like the 3-long-1-short white lines on a blue square icon for Google Documents.
> Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one.
The Drive edits Doc/Docx files; if for some reason you don't like using the Drive App to do that, you can switch to QO from the document opened in Drive by using the "Open in..." menu from Drive to open a document in QO.
I've just tried it, and no, it can't. On the webapp, editing is done by converting to google docs format; that option doesn't seem to be available on mobile. It can't even view them natively, if QO isn't installed it appears to show them in a web viewer. Only quickoffice can edit .doc/.docx's. But you're right you can open a .doc in QO from drive (assuming it's installed, it'll register an intent), which does alleviate the problem.
But it's still silly, and confusing for non-technical users, to have two similarly-designed office apps, published by the same company, which can each edit a mutually-exclusive set of document formats. And that using intents to edit works one way but not the other. I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.
On the other hand you're right about the icon. My mistake, I'll correct my post.
I would be too; it worth noting that doing separate things in overlapping-but-not-identical domains and then merging them over time (especially when one is an acquisition, like QO) isn't really unusual for Google (and increasing the overlap on the way to merger isn't unusual, either.)
QO's been around for quite a long time, and is a fairly recent acquisition. Its not a new offering, the news here is that its just been made free.
which i'm sure is exactly what google wants. they want you creating documents in their format, not in microsoft's format. quickoffice exists to tick off the "MS Office compatibility" checkbox on spec sheets, not because google loves that file format so much. and office documents don't get the realtime collaborative editing or chat interface or any of the other stuff that drive documents get, so to reduce confusion about why some features are unavailable, it makes sense to keep it as a separate app.
Even if they don't support a format, they could at least display a proper message. "Format not supported". That's purely an overlook.
in the eighties the allmighty IBM get crushed by the rookie microsoft because it didnt see the new software wave comming.. and from this new market its arch-enemy was born
now microsoft is falling into pieces, because microsoft in the nineties, didnt see the internet revolution comming (or was afraid to ask), and its killer born from it.
google its not only taking what once was a market dominated by microsoft, but are dominating also in the internet arena.. and if you guys see well .. they have created a "internet as a platform", buying and acquiring all over the ones who create little niches in this BIG massive platform..
my question is.. it will have internet life outside of the google internet platform? and worst yet..
it will have life outside of the corporate internet the took all over? (the people who knew the internet in the beggining of times know what im talking about)
before us all were considered products and advert targets?
Sorry, my OCD wouldn't allow me to absorb your otherwise well thought out post.
I agree with you that Google is moving into an area Microsoft used to be in with IBM, but I feel like Google, while it does nice things like this, is similarly going to the same location. There's nothing stopping from other companies from coming up with something similar; the problem for now is adoption.
I'd like to find a document editor outside of the major competitors like Microsoft and Google, but to be honest, the others are frankly terrible by comparison. When that changes, at least in the document area, Google is going to rethink what they're doing or buy them out (which is also possible).
The one thing that ties all of these services together for now is Gmail. Because it serves as a single login, it makes transition to other Google owned products easier. Besides being good at the services they provide, this is the real grease in the wheels that makes the whole machine run.
We're already seeing other services crop up to fill the niche YouTube is filling. Vimeo, for example, is actually quite good. While it doesn't have a lot of the silly videos and stupid clips YouTube is famous for, it's got a lot of creative people making beautiful content. But tying Vimeo to a document editing platform?
We're not quite there yet.
The biggest feature of YouTube, in my opinion, is not the video hosting. Rather it is the content discovery mechanism which, even as a programmer, I can best describe as black magic.
The internet remains the internet; Google is not creating "the internet as a platform".
Fractured English is usually quite tolerable as long as it's somewhat coherent, but when it comes in the form of a nonsensical rant I find it exponentially less so.
Also, there are the inner mechanics of capitalism, with its acquisitions and fusions.. and quickoffice its a example of that..
on the other side, the small companies wont stand against delicious buying offers of billions of dollars..
Capitalism its all about monopoly, isnt? so.. 2 + 2 = ..
Eric schimidt maybe is a small guy, but what a appetite.. :)
>"I'm not saying that they are ALREADY "the" platform, I'm saying that they are trying to be, and are slowly becoming just that.
>If you try and measure what portion of the internet is made up of Google's services/products/infrastructure and what portion of your own personal device usage depends on those services, would you still think this isn't something to worry about?
> Also, something about capitalism, words that have little to do with it... and quickoffice is an example of that.
> On the other hand small companies will accept large buyouts.
> Capitalism is all about monopolies isn't it? So 2+2 = 'obvious point you should be getting'
> Schmidt Quip
I understand your point, and to some degree I agree that it's worth thinking about, but certainly not worth lamenting over. Expanding infrastructure and buying up companies in areas of interest are obvious choices for a successful company.
Capitalism is about competition, not monopolies, and as long as Google has competition in the form of Amazon/Microsoft/etc. there's no point wasting time worrying about a potential future monopoly on "the internet".
Also, the stock browser on Android (the non Chrome one) and also the one built into Android Webviews in apps has no websocket support.