The Google Office

Can the Web giant’s suite of free online programs replace your copy of Microsoft Office?

Imagine being able to access all your important documents from any computer with an Internet connection—or never having to buy, install, or upgrade office software again. You may already use a Web-based e-mail service instead of an e-mail client, but the next programs to go online could very well be your word processor and your spreadsheet program. You can now get a lot done with only a humble browser.

The idea behind Web applications is simple: rather than running on your computer, a Web application runs on a server—you interact with it through your browser. These programs don’t need to be updated and maintained on individual computers, and since your files are also stored on a server, you can access them from anywhere without schlepping a disk around.

Google is the biggest and best-known company that’s generating buzz for a growing collection of Web applications. It includes a word processor called Docs and a spreadsheet program called Spreadsheets (both available at docs.google.com ); a calendar called Google Calendar ; and, of course, the Web-based e-mail service Gmail . The price for all of these programs is a whopping $0.

Can these Web applications replace your $399 copy of Microsoft Office? If you have a slow or unreliable Internet connection, the answer is definitely no. But most people who do some word processing or spreadsheet work can benefit from Google’s programs—either as a complement to Office or, in some cases, as a replacement.

I’ll show you some of the coolest things these programs can do. To use them, you need a Mozilla-based browser, such as Firefox . You also need a Gmail account or, if you don’t want Gmail, a Google account ).

The Google Office

Can the Web giant's suite of free online programs replace your copy of Microsoft Office?

Anywhere wordsmith

Until recently, no one would have thought seriously about doing word processing in a Web browser. As Google Docs capably demonstrates, those days are over. Docs both handles the basics and offers powerful collaboration features that make it easy to work on documents with other people.
Number cruncher

If you carry a laptop around just so you can show clients your latest marketing forecasts or call up sales figures at company meetings, you can save yourself some bother by using Google Spreadsheets instead. The program provides editable spreadsheets that are compatible with Microsoft Excel—and, best of all, you and your colleagues can modify them simultaneously.
Mighty messenger

Google wasn’t the first company to offer free e-mail accounts that you could access in a Web browser. But Gmail provides an unusually hefty amount of storage (at least 2.8GB per user), excellent spam filtering, and the convenience of fast, reliable Google searching through all those gigabytes of stored e-mail.
Schedule master

Google Calendar is very much like an online version of iCal. You can store events such as appointments and birthdays; set up meetings that you invite other people to attend; make events repeat on a schedule; view your events by day, week, month, or other time periods; set alarms; publish your calendars so that others can see your events (even in iCal!); and subscribe to public calendars such as lists of holidays and sporting events. And as in iCal, you can move an event simply by dragging it to a new time or day on the calendar.