Lots of news this morning about Google’s new Google Apps Premier Edition offering. I’ll let others break out the features, which seem like minor changes to the currently free Google Apps particulars. Personally, I’d like to see a much broader collection of features, such as folders for GMail and more enhanced Word processing, particularly layout control, printing and so on. I’d also like to see a better online challenger to OneNote, which has become one of my most commonly used Office apps.
Don Dodge does a good job of breaking down many of the missing items in Google Apps. I have to say though that the collaboration features–particularly in the calendar and in the Google Spreadsheet are very nice. Yes, I could set up a server to do something similar, but I the point is I don’t. One less thing to worry about. Same goes with e-mail and an Exchange server. I want to see the server side support become as transparent as possible for the typical low-demand users like myself.
I imagine Google will keep adding features that will even out the playing field. And on Microsoft’s side I hope they step up with an extensible platform. My guess is that this is where Microsoft can lead hands down. By leveraging its development partners, Microsoft has a chance to offer a broader collection of online Office features faster. I’d be very interested in adding editing gestures to an online Word processor, like InkGestures provides for Word now.
We’ll have to see how this all plays out. So far, from what I see neither Google nor Microsoft is going all that fast in this space. I would have expected Google to update their apps faster and I’d have expected to see more from Microsoft in terms of their online strategy, particularly if it’s going to leverage third-party developers as much as I hope it will.