Google Readies Powerpoint Competitor

By Greg McNevin

April 19, 2007: Google is preparing to take another step forward with its online office suit, buying up Melbourne’s Tonic Systems and priming its online presentation offering.

According to Ryan Stewart at O’Reilly Radar, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed that there will soon be a presentation component for Google Docs & Spreadsheets, bringing the web based offering even closer to fully-fledge productivity suites such as Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org.

“Google is focusing on collaboration and tying the new presentation feature into those features with Docs and Spreadsheets,” writes Stewart. “John [Battelle, author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture] said this "completes the office suite". Eric dodged the question about this being a big competitor to Microsoft Office, but John made sure to get an answer.”

The release has been confirmed again on the official Google blog by Engineering Director Sam Schillace. “We'll soon be welcoming a new addition to the Google Docs & Spreadsheets family: presentations,” writes Schillace.

To really get things rolling, Google has also just purchased the Melbourne and San Francisco-based Tonic Systems and its presentation and document conversion technology.

“They 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.”

Whether or not Google’s offering matures into a robust competitor to Microsoft Office is yet to be seen, however, with a more complete package on the way the day when the two can be compared more credibly is closing.

Schillace says that presentations should be out this summer in the US.

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