Google appears to be positioning itself to take a bite out of Microsoft Office and I think they will eventually succeed in doing it. I would much rather have all my records stored online where I don’t have to worry about a hard drive crash and where I can get to them from any computer, any time, for ever. I just had a hard drive crash and believe me, I wish I would have had all my documents stored on the Internet somewhere.

Source: http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=64656

I don’t agree. In fact, I believe that the recently released Google products miss the mark entirely. Now I must qualify my opinion by saying that I am not basing my opinion on actual use of the office system. I have not used any of the “Google Office” features that have recently been released by Google (spreadsheet, calendar, Google Base, etc.), nor do I intend to. Perhaps my reasons are ignorant, and perhaps my reasoning is short sighted, but here is why I will never trust my important documents to an online program:

The Internet isn’t always stable

What do I do if my Internet connection goes out? How will I access my most important documents if I can’t get onto my computer? What if I am traveling on business and need important documents for a presentation? What if I can’t access them due to a lack of an Internet connection? Sure, I’m throwing out a lot of “what if scenarios”, but I think that one of the major advantages to “offline” documents (such as those documents created in Microsoft Office), are the fact that they are indeed offline. Meaning, I will ALWAYS be able to access them as long as my computer maintains it’s hard drive and operating system integrity. (Sure, computer crashes may also be an issue of it’s own, but that’s another story… That’s why they invented Jump Drives, CD-R’s, DVD-R’s, External Hard Drives, Network Drives, Tape Backup, and even the wonderful 1.44 MB 3.5″ floppy diskette!)

Google is holding the power

The Google Office product will be free, and your content will be stored on Google’s servers, and ONLY accessible to you. What if Google changes their mind? I am sure that they currently have a policy in tact that says that any information you share with them is private, and for “your eyes only”. What if they decide to change their policy? If they are anything like credit card companies, they can change their privacy policies with little more than a letter in the mail. Much like credit card companies, Google could make a change to their policy and bury it in a 50 page legal document. Who reads through those things?

Google is in business to make money

Sure, Google offers their products for free, but how long can this last? What happens when Google decides to charge people for using their Office system? Why would they give away a product for free if they can charge people for it? It would be bad business to offer powerful software for free, and I don’t think Google wants to make any moves that are considered “Bad Business”.

Web-based productivity software? Is it really productive?

NO! I have had extensive experience using web-based programs that are designed to mimic the GUI (graphical user interface) programs we normally run on our personal computers, and you know what? They all stink! This is not due to the quality of the program itself, but rather the massive amounts of data transmitted in order to create the look and feel of a stand-alone GUI program. It takes massive amounts of resources in order to mimic a program such as Microsoft Word in a web browser, and this results in slowly loading pages. This is not likely to improve any time soon. In fact, as these systems improve, they will most likely consume even more resources, and take even longer to load!

Conclusion

Now I must reiterate that I am not basing my distrust of Google Office on anything but my own personal experiences with previous “online” software solutions, and I’m not basing this on my actual experiences with Google Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, etc. Take what you will from my opinion, and feel free to share yours by posting a comment to this post.