Competition has always driven innovation. But not all innovation drives competition. Only the ones that have a greater appeal to the masses and the ones that are not drastically radical have more often found success. People have always been slow and weary to react to change. It has always been observed that when something new is associable with its predecessor and the change is evident in its improvements, it is much easily and quickly adapted than the one that cannot be related to at least by the multitudes.One such example is the area of word processors.
Microsoft has ruled this sector for decades now with its almighty MS Word. It has been a marvelous word processing software and has served people quite loyally for quite some time now. Although we keep on cribbing about Microsoft products, its anti-competition policies, its shortcomings etcetera but we all use Microsoft products and especially when it comes to Office. The simple reason is that the MS Office products are simple, easy to use, very effective and a kind of must have.
MS Word is not free and that is probably the major reason why a few people (believe me, they are very very few in number) do not use it. Its alternates like Open Office Text Document (by Sun and free) and Corel Word Perfect (not free but gives a large enough free trial period) are ridiculous replicas of MS Word. (even the short cuts are similar) This talks a lot about the effectiveness of MS Word. Since people have been using MS Word for quite some time, its alternates have to be pretty similar to facilitate easy migration. Also, MS Word is very user friendly and trying to make something different and complicated will not appeal to the common man.
There is, however a new player. Google Docs and Spreadsheets is the new entrant. Unlike MS Word and its counterparts, it is conceptually different as it is a Web word processor Instead of the document being saved in your hard disk, the document gets saved in the server under your Google account. This is very consistence with Google's ideology of shifting computing away from the individual to the central grid. Hence hard disk crash does not affect your important documents. Also the document is available from any place at any time on any machine with Internet access.
Secondly, the interface is very much similar to that of MS Word. That is, considering the basic editing tools like cut, copy paste, undo, spell check, font, paragraph etcetera, Google Docs can be easily related to . However these functionalities are very basic in nature and are not as comprehensive.
However, the usp of Google Docs is the ability to collaborate. Since the documents are online, one can invite several collaborators to work on the same document simultaneously. This is something very new and very useful especially today when the corporate culture relies so much on collaborative and group project reports. Also the document gets auto saved periodically.
So with all the great features and innovation, is Google Docs the next generation word processing software? Is it all set to replace MS Word?
Well, it has a long way to go. Its collaborative feature loses appeal when more than 9-10 people work on it simultaneously. The response is very slow, lagging and not comfortable to work with. Secondly, Internet access although much much easier than the past, isn't yet an obvious aspect. Consider travelling on a plane or in a bus where you have time to work on a document and Google Docs wont allow you. Also, it is psychologically convenient for people to go to MS Word for a document than to Google Docs as to go to the latter, you connect to the net, go to Google, sign in and then start the document.
Also, it does not incorporate all the features that MS Word has or one would like a word processing software to have like tables, formulas, rulers, headers footers, page layouts etcetera. It is very difficult to integrate pictures, graphs etcetera into the document when compared to MS Word and its counterparts.
Hence, I believe that Google Docs is certainly not an innovative replacement for the orthodox word processing software. However, it is a great concept that encourages centralized, collaborative and secure computing. (I believe, contrary to common notion, PCs are more vulnerable than servers and online storage) Also it has a great scope for plain text based applications that require multiple access and back up.
MS Word is not free and that is probably the major reason why a few people (believe me, they are very very few in number) do not use it. Its alternates like Open Office Text Document (by Sun and free) and Corel Word Perfect (not free but gives a large enough free trial period) are ridiculous replicas of MS Word. (even the short cuts are similar) This talks a lot about the effectiveness of MS Word. Since people have been using MS Word for quite some time, its alternates have to be pretty similar to facilitate easy migration. Also, MS Word is very user friendly and trying to make something different and complicated will not appeal to the common man.
There is, however a new player. Google Docs and Spreadsheets is the new entrant. Unlike MS Word and its counterparts, it is conceptually different as it is a Web word processor Instead of the document being saved in your hard disk, the document gets saved in the server under your Google account. This is very consistence with Google's ideology of shifting computing away from the individual to the central grid. Hence hard disk crash does not affect your important documents. Also the document is available from any place at any time on any machine with Internet access.
Secondly, the interface is very much similar to that of MS Word. That is, considering the basic editing tools like cut, copy paste, undo, spell check, font, paragraph etcetera, Google Docs can be easily related to . However these functionalities are very basic in nature and are not as comprehensive.
However, the usp of Google Docs is the ability to collaborate. Since the documents are online, one can invite several collaborators to work on the same document simultaneously. This is something very new and very useful especially today when the corporate culture relies so much on collaborative and group project reports. Also the document gets auto saved periodically.
So with all the great features and innovation, is Google Docs the next generation word processing software? Is it all set to replace MS Word?
Well, it has a long way to go. Its collaborative feature loses appeal when more than 9-10 people work on it simultaneously. The response is very slow, lagging and not comfortable to work with. Secondly, Internet access although much much easier than the past, isn't yet an obvious aspect. Consider travelling on a plane or in a bus where you have time to work on a document and Google Docs wont allow you. Also, it is psychologically convenient for people to go to MS Word for a document than to Google Docs as to go to the latter, you connect to the net, go to Google, sign in and then start the document.
Also, it does not incorporate all the features that MS Word has or one would like a word processing software to have like tables, formulas, rulers, headers footers, page layouts etcetera. It is very difficult to integrate pictures, graphs etcetera into the document when compared to MS Word and its counterparts.
Hence, I believe that Google Docs is certainly not an innovative replacement for the orthodox word processing software. However, it is a great concept that encourages centralized, collaborative and secure computing. (I believe, contrary to common notion, PCs are more vulnerable than servers and online storage) Also it has a great scope for plain text based applications that require multiple access and back up.
No comments:
Post a Comment