How and why Google apps would be part of your tools in future.
At Web 2.0 expo Google create a big buzz by announcing that they would be launching a new PowerPoint type 
application this summer. Having already launched Google Docs and spreadsheet, the only thing that was left was a presentation tool to give some competition to offline applications. However, to get people to use Google Docs and Spreadsheet instead of the traditional tools Google will have to do a lot of work so that they can add some more features to the current applications.
Some respected authors have questioned the wisdom of Google when they bought a start-up like Tonic Systems to roll out a product which is, at best, a faded web-age facsimile of Powerpoint. However, Google has history of buying a small service and making it successful and popular by adding features to the application.
If there was any doubt about the plans of Google they all vanished when VP Douglas Merrill announced on the official Google blog that the company has acquired video conferencing software from a Swedish startup. TO add to that he stated on the blog that “They (Tonic Systems) have some great technology for presentation creation and document conversion, and it will be a great addition as we add presentation sharing and collaboration capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.”
A lot of people are now asking that what else is in the works? Phil Sim of Squash makes some guesses after a participation in a survey of Google Apps Premier users. He used Google Apps Premier keeping in mind what was there is future.
The first tool he came across was the survey tool a glimpse of which he got when he was a part of the survey that Google ran. The application he was asked to participate in was at http://survey.google.com. The last page of the tool is really interesting as it lets you peep into what Google wants to offer in the future.
The applications that are referred to are
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Email – Gmail has already made its presence felt.
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Spreadsheets – Google Docs and Spreadsheet
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Word processing – Google Docs and Spreadsheets
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Presentation – Going to launch soon and have already acquired a Swedish start up called Tonic systems.
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Calendars – Google calendar is already a favorite amongst a few thought the functionality has to be improved to make it popular.
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Online File Sharing – To some extent this available with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. In fact Google Blogscoped takes a shot at describing how Google would help you manage your files to read the article please go to http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-03-19-n81.html.
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Web page creation – Google page creator service is available though it seems that for the moment Google has lost interest in this but given the resources available Google can add features and style to this application in no time.
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Project Management – This is a something that Google will have to start working on and startups who have a project management service should be excited about this. However we all know that Google’s engineers tend to build-their-own-apps, and it’s almost guaranteed that someone, somewhere within Google has been working on a project management application. This will be a killer application to add to the suite, IMO, and will give it significant differentiation over what Microsoft offers.
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Online discussion groups – Google groups
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Contact Management – There is nothing on the horizon which can be used to manage contacts. However, if you use Google Apps for your Domain, you can already share contacts across users. It’d be great to also see some Highrise-like capabilities — taking notes, tracking interactions, and managing tasks related to people you’re working with.
Going by the activities of Google recently, it seems that Google is also looking into these areas
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Wiki: Google acquired JotSpot on Halloween of 2006 and immediately closed it to new sign-ups. News has been sparse, but in January the JotSpot developers announced an upgrade for existing customers and said it will be the last version produced before migration to Google’s infrastructure. Perhaps Google will combine project management with the JotSpot wiki capabilities — wikis provide a reasonable alternative to dedicated project management apps for some teams.
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Video Chat: Google announced its acquisition of Swedish start-up Marratech’s video conferencing software, suggesting that they intend to use it internally only. No one would be surprised if Google incorporated it into the Google Talk client to support video chat, though.
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Web meetings. Marratech offers capabilities beyond videoconferencing to include e-meetings and collaborative whiteboards along the lines of what WebEx is known for. Here’s hoping if they do offer web-based real-time meetings that it works better than WebEx.
Do you have some suggestions for Google. Feel free to express those at the Google Blogscoped page at http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/89006.html. There should be no doubt amongst the Internet users that Google plans to provide essential services to the users and this is confirmed by non other than Schmidt himself when he commented “Why would a rational person put personal information anywhere else but the (Google) cloud, given risks of losing and/or damaging a mobile device or PC?” while speaking recently at Morgan Stanley Technology Conference
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