Do People Really Believe that Google Docs Is Viable Competition for Microsoft Office?
Apparently, yes they do. According to the investment experts at The Motley Fool, Google is “eating Microsoft’s cash cow” (i.e., Office) by offering a free online suite of applications, Google Docs, that competes (sort of) with Office, and via its Google Apps, also in a free version, that provides free email, calendaring, and some really lame other stuff we’ll just pretend doesn’t exist for purposes of this argument. The Motley Fool steps through the Google advantages: It’s free (though there is a paid version), it’s available on any computer (and not just on the 96+ percent that run Windows, and then only when online), it’s “getting good enough” (a nod to the fact that Google Docs is functionally equivalent to what Word and Excel were like back in the MS-DOS days), and it offers real-time collaboration features (which I refuse to believe anyone uses for important work). So what is The Motley Fool’s conclusion? Despite the fact that Google Docs has never actually affected Microsoft’s Of
