Google Docs News & Articles

Document collaboration can be a headache. Hours can be spent sending out copies via email. Days lost waiting for revisions and edits to come back. And then additional hours combining all the changes into one homogenous document. TextFlow aims to minimize the pain of document collaboration with free online/offline collaboration software.

Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui are two former Microsoft employees with a mission: to do something with documents that Microsoft has not. Their startup company DocVerse aims to simplify how users share documents on the web by transforming Microsoft Office into an online collaboration suite.

In doing so, DocVerse climbs into the ring with several other collaboration software solutions, including Google Docs. Any guesses as to who will come out victorious?

Microsoft, the Redmond, Washington software giant, will soon be combining two of its online services: Windows Live and Office Live. Microsoft intends to simplify the customer experience and give customers one destination to interact with these cloud-based web service offerings.

Using Google Apps and Google Docs is quite an accessible and functional way to collaborate and manage documents in a Software-as-a-Service web environment, but leveraging this data in an enterprise environment could prove somewhat difficult — that is until Panorama Software released Panorama Analytics and Panorama PowerApps.

Google Docs, be aware. Zoho, a company focusing on creating web-based productivity tools, announced the release of Zoho Docs, a web-based document management and repository application that integrates content from various other Zoho applications.

Microsoft has announced Office Live Workspace (OLW), which is something like a SaaS version of SharePoint Light, only perhaps lighter than one might expect.

Office currently is taking a beating in the feisty SaaS sector, where Zoho, Google Apps and others are currently vying for marketshare. Even Adobe is getting into the game, having recently announced it would be acquiring the parent company of Buzzword, which provides Office-esque capabilities seamlessly between the Web and (eww!) non-Web worlds.

Microsoft just can’t get any peace. With Google Apps eroding the need to own a copy of Microsoft Office, and Zoho improving where Apps leaves off, the Word/Excel monopoly may be fast seeing sundown.

And the end may be sooner than expected, now that Adobe’s announced it’s going to purchase Virtual Ubiquity, the company that produces an offering called Buzzword.

Capgemini, based in France, will officially become the first top tech consultant to begin recommending Google’s office suite to corporate clients. The partnership was announced early today.

According to Forrester Research’s Ray Wong, Capgemini’s support will help Google gain street cred in the enterprise sector, where people are used to spending big dollars on cumbersome software.

Capgemini is a voice of influence for over 1 million personal computers in companies around the globe, according to CNN.

Google’s biggest competitor in serving SaaS-style office tools to businesses is Zoho, which plans to release Zoho Business at a cost US$ 10 lower than the search giant’s office suite.

So it’s finally happened: Zoho enters the enterprise at full speed with a new Suite feature called Zoho Business.

Zoho Start is a relatively new start page/integrated console that marries all Zoho apps in a single view. It currently works with Zoho Show, Writer and Sheet, with other apps to come.

Download Squad wryly writes, “Thanks Zoho, for making it extra difficult to choose between Zoho’s suite of applications, and Google’s Docs/Apps.” This isn’t the first time in recent months it’s done so. Less than a fortnight ago Zoho used Google Gears to bring its suite offline, something Google itself hasn’t opted to do.

That was neat. But unless you’re already a Zoho user, it’s hard to see how Zoho Start will draw Google Apps users into the Zoho camp.

Perhaps perceiving this, Center Networks thinks Zoho should go the extra mile and create a full start page, with the ability to include syndicated content.

Web office suite Zoho has announced it will be launching an offline component of its Zoho Writer offering, with other applications to follow over time.