Google Wants to Attract 90 Percent of Microsoft Office Users

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Purchase of QuickOffice will help goal, search engine giant believes.

Search engine giant Google believes its Google Docs platform can obtain a considerable proportion of Office users who don't utilize the software's more advanced functionality.

In an interview with AllThingsD, the firm's head of enterprise Amit Singh stressed that Google Docs can obtain 90 percent of Office users who don't use the software's advanced functionality.

"In the last year, if you look at the depth of where we've gone with Docs, both in the core features and in the desktop fidelity, we've made tremendous progress," he said. "Our goal is to get to the 90 percent of users who don't need to have the most advanced features of Office."

Singh said that the gap is decreasing between the features offered by cloud-based Document, Presentation and Spreadsheets packages, as well as Microsoft's Word, PowerPoint and Excel software. He also referred to Google's June's purchase of QuickOffice, which he believes will help the company achieve its goal.

"Sheets does tables graphing, etc., out of the box. In Q3, if you import from Excel into Sheets, you won't be able to tell the difference in Sheets. We know the gaps between our features and theirs. We're improving them week by week. We're going to get to the the 90 percent. If you need the last 10 percent, you'll want to use the desktop. The next thing is the import from PowerPoint to Slides. That's where QuickOffice is going to help us a lot," he said.

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Zak Islam
Zak Islam
Contributing writer

Zak was a contributing writer at Tom's Guide with a focus on security, networking and general computing. As a fan of any and all news relating to hardware, graphics chips or CPUs, Zak has also written for other tech sites such as Tom's Hardware and Digital Trends.

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28 Comments Comment from the forums
  • joytech22
    Title: "Google Wants to Attract 90 Percent of Microsoft Office Users"
    Actual Point: "Our goal is to get to the 90 percent of users who don't need to have the most advanced features of Office"

    If that isn't misleading I don't know what is anymore.
    Reply
  • antilycus
    doesnt LIBRE OFFICE offer the best solution? It's free, uses the OPEN DOCUMENT system, opens all version of OFfice and creates / saves all version of office files. Oh yeah and it's free and not tied to the internet either. Libre Office FTW
    Reply
  • sixdegree
    I wish Google all the best for this, because attract people (especially old people) to migrate from MS Office is a very, very hard thing to do. Google literally have to bundle their word processor with chocolate for they to even think about trying the new office suite.
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    I lost interest in Microsoft Office starting with Microsoft Office 2007.
    Reply
  • assasin32
    We'll they better put in a spelling and grammar checker on par with MS Office if they want those users. Most users use it to type up documents and for spelling and grammar, something Google Docs is really lagging behind in. As well as every other office suite I have tried. Though I will fully admit I use Abiword/Openoffice mainly for close to 10years. But I have my reasons for that.
    Reply
  • randomizer
    antilycus It's free, uses the OPEN DOCUMENT system, opens all version of OFfice and creates / saves all version of office files.
    With varying degrees of success, ranging from near-perfect to an utter disaster. Of course one can complain or one can send The Document Foundation example documents that look bad so that they can fix the problem (yes, they do ask for them). Otherwise it's just guess and hope for the best.

    assasin32 Most users use it to type up documents and for spelling and grammar, something Google Docs is really lagging behind in.
    If people paid attention in school they wouldn't need to rely on spelling and grammar checks.
    Reply
  • ojas
    JOSHSKORNI lost interest in Microsoft Office starting with Microsoft Office 2007.2010 is actually pretty good, 2013...i don't like the way it looks but functionality is good. Too ties to the internet though. But yeah, 2010 fixed the horror that was 2007. I'm talking about Office here. :P
    Reply
  • cib24
    It's all about Excel. Excel is the reason that Microsoft still holds such a tight grip on the PC space. Every business uses it to a huge extent and trying to get someone to switch from Excel when they have been using it for 20 years is going to be tough. Google will need to come out with a better version of Excel that can do even more. That's very tough to do.
    Reply
  • assasin32
    randomizerIf people paid attention in school they wouldn't need to rely on spelling and grammar checks.
    Haven't been to school anytime recently have you? I can tell you in the US High School's (or at least California) one of the priorities is to teach you enough to pass the High School Exit Exam. Fortunately they were phasing this in when I was leaving High School but I was part of the optional class that was the beta testers for it, the teachers would spend a decent chunk of the time trying to prep us for it because people either didn't learn the stuff they should have known. Or they were just bad test takers, which does happen. So they would have to teach the subject matter for the test, than teach people how to take test just so they pass a test saying they passed because passing all your classes isn't good enough now days.

    Than once that is over they have to cram all the other course material into the rest of the semester. While still taking time out to go slow enough to allow the slower students to keep pace, which is guaranteed to happen due to how there was an average of 40 students or more per teacher when I graduated. And that student/teacher ratio makes it quite difficult to teach from what I've seen. So it was usually review of what you should have already known or watered down content in hopes that everyone can keep up.

    In fact most of what I learned in High School was self taught, which mainly concerned computers. I tried to take a computer class in High School, I can honestly tell you I don't think I learned a single useful thing.

    It's mainly a matter of stupid requirements which are put in place which drag down education (High School Exit Exam) instead of allowing teachers to teach. Budget cuts which make classroom sizes grow, it was 40-1 when I graduated years ago before economy took a real head dive. And they couldn't always afford the equipment we needed sometimes.

    So to put it short paying attention in school isn't the only problem now. It's having teachers who have the ability and are willing to teach. But the odds are stacked against them with how things are run now days.

    Reply
  • EddieLomax
    If they are giving all this away for free then where is the payback?

    I'm guessing that eventually we'll see either fees appear, or more likely they incorporate the docs into their web of advertising. Maybe even just like the gmail man with google scanning every document you write to tailor their adverts.
    Reply