Discount Office 2007 Google seeks to one-up Micros

Each Google and Microsoft are intent on being Office customers; desired way of collaborating on paperwork.Microsoft is touting not merely SharePoint,Office 2007 Ultimate, but additionally its Office Web Apps — and its Microsoft Docs sibling — as a way for users to share Office documents. Office Web Apps allows users running vaious browsers and operating systems to view (and sometimes also edit/create) Office paperwork, even if they don;t have Office installed on their PCs or devices.Google,Windows 7 Pro Product Key, as of November 22, has its own alternative: Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Workplace. Google is offering an invitation-only early-access preview of Cloud Connect today.Cloud Connect is based on the DocVerse technology that Google bought in March 2010. (DocVerse;s founder and CEO is Shan Sinha, who formerly was invovled with SQL Server/SharePoint product strategy at Microsoft.)Instead of pitching that Microsoft customers dump Workplace, Google is positioning Cloud Connect as a way that Workplace 2003, 2007 and 2010 customers can sync their Office documents to Google;s cloud services. Cloud Connect is a 3 MB plug-in for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that Google developed using “purely public” Office application-programming interfaces (APIs), Google officials said. Once synced via the plug-in, documents are backed-up,Office 2007 Standard Key, given a unique URL that can be accessed via the Internet on PCs and mobile devices, according to Google. Users can not merely share documents,Office 2010 License, but additionally simultaneously coauthor and access their revision history on all documents.The initial trial is aimed at Google Docs Apps for Business people, but Google Apps for Business Docs consumers also might be added to the preview program in the not-too-distant future. Once the final version of Cloud Connect launches, Google says it will be free for consumer and business people. (Google isn;t providing a final release target date for Cloud Connect.)If you;re thinking what I was thinking — that Cloud Connect might be the way that Google brings back offline access for Google Docs (by allowing/acknowledging that consumers can save paperwork in Office on their desktop) — no dice.“This is not offline access for Docs, even though it does support offline and online editing,” Sinha told me. “Offline for Google Docs is still coming, but it will be built around HTML 5.”Google is, instead, positioning Cloud Connect as a way for current Office end users, even those using older versions of the product, to avoid having to upgrade to the latest Workplace release to get functionality like document coauthoring.“We are saying whatever version of the Office software you have,Discount Office 2007, you can take your existing installed base and move it to the Internet,” Sinha said. “This isn;t like messaging (which is more of an either Gmail or Exchange or Hotmail choice). This is not a rip-and-replace (pitch). It;s about coexistence.”For consumers running older versions of Microsoft Office — or those running Office who have to collaborate with folks on Google Docs/Google Apps — Cloud Connect might be useful. I;m not sure how many enterprise people need this kind of a bridge, however. Thoughts?