Another potential milestone in the great shift away from desktop-based to Internet-based programs.
The presentations component will have import and export capabilities for Microsoft’s PowerPoint, the presentations application in Office, in the same way that the word processor and spreadsheet applications have those capabilities for Office’s Word and Excel, respectively, said Rajen Sheth, product manager in Google’s enterprise unit. In this manner, Google’s productivity applications give Office users the ability to share files and collaborate on them, Sheth said. In that way “we’re adding functionality to existing Office tools,” he said.
Sure, sure. One great aspect of this is that presenters will no longer worry (as I once did in a presentation on museum culture) about leaving essential files for their presentation at home. Despite the deference to Office, I think we’ll see that many users will start making their presentations exclusively on Google, although having a desktop copy of a presentation is always good since a stable Internet connection is not always guaranteed. This application will be next to flawless if they allow the user to download an offline file to their computer, and the need to design a presentation in Office would be eliminated.
Also, Google Apps has a special section devoted to small businesses. The standard edition of Google Apps is free, and a Premier Edition, which offers only a small upgrade from the Standard, can be used for free on a trial basis until April 30.
