Google is launching their “Google Apps for Your Domain” a series of services that provides email, instant messaging, calendaring, and a web page publishing tool.InformationWeek has a complete story here. says Google plans to add later this year when Writely and Google Spreadsheets will be added to the mix. TechMeme has lots more.
Currently the Google Apps page leads you to a beta sign up. Paul Kedrosky give a first hand account of using Google Apps.
Could this be the start of Google Office? Dan Farber thinks so.. For now, this looks more like a response to Microsoft’s Office Live Services than a direct counter to Office itself. With the addition of Writely and Google Spreadsheets this may change, but to challenge Office Google will need much more work in each of these apps. Google’s strength will be on collaboration side, however, Microsoft isn’t sitting still in this area. If you haven’t, take a look at OneNote and its page sharing feature and Vista’s document sharing within adhoc groups.
I do wonder though that as Office 2007 hits the streets with its new UI and file formats, there might be a possibility to get some converts who are looking to avoid paying for an update.
However, Office is more than just a set of apps. It’s rapidly becoming a platform and here Google needs lots of work if they want to challenge Office.
Take my area of interest for instance: Tablet PCs. As a developer I can add editing of Word documents using the pen. Or look at what Josh Einstein has done to make Outlook even more useful on a Tablet. Is any of this doable with Writely or GMail? Google doesn’t provide a way. Google needs to engage with developers a lot more if it really wants to unseat Office–over even sit close to where Office currently is.