Google Adds New Features to Docs, Takes Fight to Microsoft

From DailyTech: Microsoft Office is the dominant player in productivity apps in the business world. The office suite has more users than any other software platform and Google is trying to take some of the users of Office away though with its cloud offerings including Google Docs.

Microsoft is set to launch its newest iteration of the Office productivity suite this year with Office 2010. Microsoft first talked about Office 2010 last year and the products are expected to ship in the first half of 2010. Pricing for the Office suite was unveiled in January 2010 with full Professional versions costing as much as $499. The high price of the software is what has many firms looking to cloud-based offerings from Google that are much cheaper and offer free upgrades.

Google has updated its Docs software with a number of new features and has taken one key feature for many users out of the picture. Google announced on its official blog that the new Docs service was unveiled this week at its first-ever Atmosphere cloud computing event. The new changed to Google Docs includes new document and spreadsheet features.

Changes to the document software, the Google version of Word, include a new margin ruler, better numbering and bullets, and better image placement options. One key update is that the Google Docs software can now import documents directly from Word and keep the original formation so users don’t have to fix issues with bullets and formatting. This is a big feature because many businesses will continue to use Microsoft Office and will go between it and Google Docs as employees work.

Google reports that it also made general speed and responsiveness upgrades to the cloud-based offering with faster JavaScript processing. Large spreadsheets are now easy to work with in the browser and feel like they are being edited on the desktop. Collaboration features were also a big area of focus in the updates.

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