Google launches preemptive strike at Office 365

From InfoWorld: How much is good enough? That question kept resonating through my Office 365-drenched brain as I started using the final version of Google's new Office add-in, dubbed Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office (moniker gets high points for steak, not much for sizzle).

The product is a gussied-up version of DocVerse, a collaboration program Google bought in February 2010, and it doesn't bring anything new to the online collaboration ball game. But it's fast, easy, free to an extent -- more about that shortly -- and it offers a few unique capabilities you may find inviting.

Here's how it works. After you download and install Cloud Connect and re-start Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, you're prompted to enter your Google credentials. Google asks for permission to allow Cloud Connect (Pavilion) access to your account. You can choose to save your documents to the Google Cloud automatically (every time you save in the application), or you can make the cloud sync manual (when you specifically click on the Sync button).

When the Office app comes up for air, it sprouts a new Ribbon (yech). Although it takes up substantial screen real estate, it allows you to change the sync state between automatic and manual, and it holds the requisite Sync button. When you save a document in automatic mode, or when you click the Sync button, a copy of the doc goes to your Google Docs account. As soon as the doc appears in Google Docs it's assigned an URL, which you can email to other people and thus invite collaboration.

Collaborators can work on multiple parts of a single document simultaneously. Changes are merged when the document is saved or synced, and the saver gets to choose how to handle editing collisions (a very simple choice between take my changes or take the other changes, with conflicting modifications dropped). If you go offline, the sync takes places as soon as you re-connect to the Internet. As usual, Google Docs keeps earlier versions of documents, so rolling back is easy.

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