Operating systems are old news, these days. The realm of productivity suites is where the real battle is being fought. At least, this is the impression one gets from Microsoft and Google.
Both companies have increased the focus on these applications.
In Redmond’s case, it is understandable — the Office division now brings in the most money for Microsoft. The company readily promotes the cloud powered Office 365 solution, and there is news that it is developing completely touch optimized versions of these software for tablets.
While at the same time, the software titan recently laid a fast one on Google Docs, calling that experience suboptimal. Mind you, there is some truth to this.
And Google, fully aware of this, has made some quick changes.
This new episode has the company announcing the integration of native Office editing in Docs, to make sure that no messed up formatting or compatibility issues exist.
As stated at I/O 2014 yesterday:
“If someone on your team moves the file to Google Drive and opens it to make changes, you no longer experience that familiar Office look and the formatting is a mess, will likely be recreating the formatting and making sure no content was lost.
No matter what kind of group project you’re collaborating on, you don’t want to waste time reformatting and finalizing the collective work of your team, or worrying whether one or more of your team members is unable to share in the rich Office experience on their devices.”
Simply put, Google Docs users can now save new documents in the Microsoft Office format.
All this is possible because of the QuickOffice acquisition that Google completed two years ago. That solution already offered support for Microsoft Office documents in offline mode, but Google has now integrated that in its online service.