Google Docs vs. Microsoft Office
CIO Magazine has written several times about the brewing battle between Google Docs vs Microsoft Office. These were my comments on the CIO article based on my experience creating an online resume using Google Docs…
The opportunity for Google isn’t so much in displacing MS Office but offering better and easier tools for sharing information. I suspect Google’s primary target is MS Sharepoint not MS Office.
Online Resume/CV
When I wanted an easier way to share my resume than sending doc and pdf attachments, I turned to Google Docs. My MS Office resume was too bloated for the web. My Google Docs resume is not only formatted for the web but also has added benefits:
- Searching “Software Sales Executive Resume” or “Jim Littlefield Resume” will often show my resume link on the first results page.
- Using Google Analytics, I gain insight into how people are searching for me and my content.
- Web profiles sites like LinkedIn can easily include links to my resume.
Online collaboration works best when posts include links and rich formatting. Yet who wants to type all the necessary HTML tags? This response was created using HTML created via Google Docs. Had I used MS Office, there would be a bunch of inline code that is not permitted by CIO’s content management system.
Directing people to a web document insures they are viewing the most current version available. After a discussion revisions can be quickly made which are immediately available. Now as I experiment with Google Wave I can see the process becoming even more collaborative and dynamic.
For now I don’t foresee creating and responding to 100-page RFPs via Google Docs. MS Office tools are far better suited for that task. It’s all a matter of picking the right tool for the job at hand.
Are you using Google Docs? How’s it working for you?
