Google targets SharePoint with Office cloud plugin

Google is taking aim at Microsoft Office and SharePoint with its Cloud Connect system.

Cloud Connect is a free plug-in that (theoretically, at least) lets Microsoft Office users work on the same document at the same time, by running the document through Google Docs.

Users at both ends keep working in Word, PowerPoint or Excel, while Google’s web-based software manages the collaboration and changes.

“For example, you can edit a Word document’s table of contents from Dublin while coworkers adjust formatting and make revisions from Denver,” said apps product manager Shan Sinha, in a post in the Google blog.

“Instead of bombarding each other with attachments and hassling to reconcile people’s edits, your whole team can focus on productive work together,” Sinha said.

In our brief tests, however, the synchronisation completely failed on the most basic of Word documents.

Instead of bombarding each other with attachments and hassling to reconcile people’s edits, your whole team can focus on productive work together

Google claims the tool lets business users collaborate without shelling out for SharePoint. “Google Cloud Connect vastly improves Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, so companies can start using web-enabled teamwork tools without upgrading Microsoft Office or implementing SharePoint 2010,” Sinha noted.

Mac support

While many of Google’s products land on Windows first and Macs later, the company noted it’s not able to make an Apple version.

“Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time,” said Sinha. “We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.”

And if Google wasn’t making its enterprise rivalry with Microsoft clear, it had more. It announced the “Appsperience” program to let companies try out Google’s Enterprise Apps at a low cost for 90 days, “so businesses encumbered with 1990s technology can experience modern collaboration and the burst of productivity that’s possible now.”