The Way to a Google Office

One day in the not-too-distant future you sit down at your

keyboard to check your messages from Google's Gmail, then fire up Google Word

to write a couple of letters. Next you work on a presentation on new business

locations in Google Point, incorporating maps from Google Maps and satellite

imagery from Google Earth.

A world in which software from Google has replaced much of today's

Microsoft hegemony seems far-fetched. But advances in technology and the hints

dropped by the very secretive Google suggest that it could become a reality a

few years down the road.

The most interesting recent development was the Oct 4

announcement of a strategic alliance between Google and Sun Microsystems. The

only detail revealed was an insignificant plan for Sun and Google to distribute

some software for each other. In the longer run, however, this could be a big

deal indeed for computer users, especially at home, in schools, and in small

businesses.

A Google-Sun alliance, if it flowers, could take advantage of

new technology for running applications on the Web, one that eliminates the

sluggishness and limited functions of traditional Web-based programs. The most

widely used approach is based on an industry standard called Ajax, and a second

method uses Macromedia Flash. Either can produce programs that look and feel

like the desktop ones running on your hard drive. Screens redraw nearly

instantly, and you can use the mouse to drag and drop text or other objects.

Yahoo!, EarthLink, and Microsoft's Hotmail are testing mail services that, in

speed and responsiveness, behave more like Outlook than like clunky Web mail.

Google Maps is also a showcase for this technology.

The key to any Google applications package could be Sun's

StarOffice, a desktop productivity. While lacking some of the polish of

Microsoft Word or Excel, StarOffice is more than adequate for most consumer,

educational, and small-business uses. It can now accurately read and write files

in Microsoft formats-something that was problematic in earlier versions. The

main difficulty is with documents that have programs, or macros, embedded within

them.

Google and Sun would face formidable challenges if they decide

to turn StarOffice into a Web-based suite. The technical job of reworking the

suite into software suitable for Web delivery is a big one. On the plus side,

Sun and Google both have deep knowledge of how to run the sort of large, complex

network that would be required.

The business hurdles may be even greater. Although the rental of

Web-based software has gained some traction among companies-Salesforce.com's

customer-relations-management program being a prime example-it will likely be

a tough sell to consumers. And it is hard to see how Google's basic model of

selling ads closely tied to content could work with a word processor or

spreadsheet. Nothing Google or anyone else does is going to disrupt Microsoft's

hold on corporate desktops.

Most companies have invested too much in an Office-based

ecosystem to consider changing. But other markets, including education, could be

up for grabs, especially if Google were to devise an offering that was easy to

use and free of the ever-increasing bloat of Office features that only interest

corporate users. If Microsoft executives aren't worried, they should be.