However, as Microsoft was quick to point out, offline access capabilities are severely limited. For one, offline Gmail access is a stripped down version of regular Gmail, and is accessible only through a specific version of Chrome used by less than 2% of browser users. On the other hand, users only get read only access to Google Docs online. 

Quite limited, one has to admit, but at least it is a start. It also represents a concession from Google that we are far from the fully online world that Google envisions. Offline access remains critical to most businesses. 

Punch 1) Microsoft accuses Google of lying about Apps for government. This can be seen as Microsoft's revenge for the Google Apps suit last year, where it sued the Department of Interior for allegedly giving Microsoft an unfair advantage in its bidding process. Google went on to win an injuction in that suit. One of Google's points was that Microsoft's solution lacked FISMA, the security certification required the government for government contracts. Waiting for a chance to bite back, earlier this month, Microsoft accused Google of lying about having FISMA for its Google Apps for Government. 

Counter Punch. Google responded by saying that since it has FISMA for Google Apps for Business, and Google Apps for Government is basically Google Apps for Business with additional security, FISMA applies here as well.  

Flurry of Punches 2) Microsoft has followed up with a flurry of punches in an attempt to knock out Google Apps. A few days ago Microsoft posted a blog entry where it rather cleverly compared Google Apps costs to an iceberg with most of the costs being hidden, or what it called a "Google tax". The blog entry was followed by a whitepaper elaborating upon what the hidden costs were.  Not stopping at that, Microsoft also released a website with a live example of how Google Docs spoils document fidelity as compared to Office Web Apps. Quite ironically, the Office Web Apps example doesnt open for the Bee at all…

Counter Punch. Google has kept mum so far at the latest Microsoft agression.

This comes a long way from Microsoft's earlier strategy in the business market where it simply kept silent about Google's creeping success, and would refuse to aknowledge its existence. Those days are gone. The fight is out in the open, and nasty. 

Anyway, first things first.

Oracle just made widely available its entry in the web based productivity suite market, with a product called "Cloud Office" (that was the only phrase left I guess). It seeks to compete in a market that quite prominently has Google Docs, Microsoft's star entry Office Web Apps (Zoho has been in the market for a long time but doesn't get enough attention).

Here's where it gets confusing. Office Web Apps is competing with Google Docs, which is not really stand alone, but part of it's wider collaboration suite Google Apps. Office Web Apps, the online version of MS Office, isn't available stand alone commercially either. It can either be accessed with SharePoint 2010, Microsoft's on premise collaboration software, or Office 365, Microsoft's web based integrated communication and collaboration suite.

So, what exactly is Cloud Office competing against? Google Docs and Office Web Apps? Since they are not stand alone, by extension, Google Apps and Office 365? On premise MS Office?

Not to forget the messaging part of the picture. Google Apps also has Gmail, which is competing with Microsoft's on premise messaging server MS Exchange. Microsoft on the other hand, includes messaging in its web based Office 365.

Here's how i see it. There is a convergence of productivity, messaging and collaboration software, and this convergence will take place on the web. Oracle has products in the collaboration market as well with Oracle Collaboration Suite (on premise messaging and collaboration) and Oracle Beehive (web based collaboration). However there is no talk of integration between these different pieces.

Until the convergence takes place, the market is going to be messy mix of various hybrids of apples and organges (messaging, collaboration and productivity solutions) competing against each other.

Now, Google has introduced the ability to convert the files stored in Google Docs to Google Docs online formats. There are two ways to do this:-

Right at the gate – When a user is uploading a file to Google Docs, they have an option to covert the file to the corresponding Google Docs format.

Stored Files – Alternatively, users can also convert files already stored in Google Docs to corresponding web formats. This feature creates a Google Docs copy of the coverted file rather than replacing the original file itself.

It may be noted that although google lets you store multiple file types, only supported formats will be converted.

Kevin Tea has more than 30 years senior journalistic and marketing communications experience, working with some of the leading newspaper groups and blue chip companies in the UK. Working with the European Commision; contributing to Webweaving, where Bill Gates also contributed; or managing various tech e-journals are some of the feathers on his cap. Currently, his time is distributed between offering a wide range of consultancy, PR and marketing communications services as an independent consultant and covering the web2.0 collaboration market at web2andmore.net.

By Kevin Tea

Every online aficionado's nightmare hit me last week when my four year old computer curled up its little toes and died. The good news in this is that I ordered a new PC with go faster stripes and fluffy dice; the bad news – apart from the fact that after seven days it is probably already obsolete – is that it was going to take a week to arrive. This meant that I wasn't going to be able to have access to my online life – banking, email, documents, calendar etc. Well, that's not strictly true. I managed to monitor three email accounts and Twitter on my mobile phone but the experience won't go down as "did the Earth move for you?" experience!

In order to avoid cold turkey I decided to clear my desk drawers out of years of accumulated cover disks from computer magazines and came across an old cd-rom with a copy of Ubuntu burnt onto it. I slipped it in the cd-rom drive and within minutes it had loaded, I had configured it to access the net via my through the air broadband service and I was back in business.

To many people reading this, there is nothing unremarkable to this. Despite writing a tech blog I am not a technical person, I just like things to work out of the box. You are probably of an age where the Internet has been with you since you learnt to walk, but when I first started on the net it was through typed in string commands, WYSIWYG wasn't even in the frame and web page design was created through hand coded text. Though you may take the net for granted to me it can be summed up in one word – liberation – and this was initially down to Google.

Like many early web adopters I changed my ISP (Internet Service Provider) on a regular basis so my email address was constantly changing which was a PITA when it came to notifying contacts. When Gmail arrived I was presented with a perfectly serviceable email service with the option of POP3 or, more importantly for the mobile web worker, IMAP. I could access mail via a web browser, email client such as Thunderbird or via a mobile phone. Apart from emails allied to my various domains, I will never need to change my email address again regardless of what company supplies my Internet access.

Similarly Google Apps has changed the way that I work, providing a flexibility previously impossible. Last year with two colleagues I had to prepare a major report. With one colleague in the south of the UK and another working in America the old way of preparing a document would be for me to write my part of it and then email it to the others to add to what I have written or insert their own input and then email it all back to me for collating. It's time consuming and prone to errors. Armed with Google Apps all three of us worked on the document in our own real time which resulted in the document being finished quicker than anticipated, there was no need for time consuming collation and for some inexplicable reason there were fewer errors and it read better!

However grateful I am to Google I do not think the company is omnipotent. Some time back they decided not to continue development of Google Notebook which was a light but easy to use webclipper. Now as much as love Evernote there are times when it is too much for simple jotting data from sites. You can still use Notebook in a limited fashion but a little more development and it would have evolved into a wonderful tool.

Then there was the Google Buzz debacle. I have no doubt that Buzz is a wonderful tool but I want my email to handle email, not be a portal to let everyone see what the hell is going on in my world. BY assuming that people wanted to share everything on their Gmail account showed a remarkable naivety on Google's behalf. Most new product development involves research among focus groups – a step Google looks like missing out otherwise Buzz wouldn't have caused such a furore.

And then there's Google Wave, the alleged answer to group collaboration tools which the Big G has announced it is pulling the plug on at the end of the year. There was such a buzz (pun intended) when Wave was launched you had to buy invitations off eBay. Wave had phenomenal potential but someone, somewhere in the Googleplex ran out of steam. I guess the next time I collaborate with someone on Google Docs I’ll be able to tune into his webcam and see his dog licking its balls in the background because Google has promised that elements of Wave will be incorporated into other services such as Docs and – don't they ever learn – Gmail.

In many respects it is good to see that Google has its faults, I just hope that those weaknesses don't cross over into the security setup that guards our online data!

But in its continuing effort to make its suite more robust, and incorporate feedback, Google just introduced new sharing options within Google Docs. The new options are as follows:-

Improved Sharing Options: Google Docs can now be given three new sharing levels – private, anyone with a link, or public on the web. Private documents are available for access only to the people you explicitly allow access to. Anyone with a link allows any Google Apps user within your domain with the link to your document to view and edit it. Public to the web allows you to share documents with users ouside your system through a public link. You can even apply bulk settings to multiple documents.

Better Visibility: Sharing options appear right next to your documents next to your documents list. 

The bulk share option is a great help for organizations which may wish to share specific documents with a large number of people.

As posted at the official Google Docs blog, Gavin Haslam, IT manager at Rentokil Initial, said

The new sharing settings………will save us huge amounts of time when rolled out across our 35,000 users on Google Apps.

Although Google never launched the GDrive, Memeo has called its new service the GDrive, a drive which integrates and fits into the local file structure of both Windows Explorer and the OS X finder. Formerly Memeo users could access Google Docs right on their desktop using Memeo's client, but now the GDrive lets them drag and drop upload files and folders to their Google Docs account. On the other hand, they can open and edit Google Docs files locally like any other file.

The Big Question

What is unclear however, is whether you can sync files only with the files stored in the online folders part of Google Docs, or if you can actually sync files between the local formats and the online formats of Google Docs. For example, if we upload an MS Office file using GDrive, can we open it as a Google Docs file online (without explicitly converting it) and so on. On the other hand, can we simply navigate out Google Docs account and open Google Docs format as a local format?

If this is the case, this would really differentiate Memeo's offering from similar offerings from Box.Net, DropBox or HyperDrive.

Users just need to access their live.com account, and will find options that allow them to start creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

I took a few minutes to test it, and liked what I saw. The layout and design is similar to Office 2007 and its ribbon navigation. As expected, Office Web Apps is a stripped down version of desktop based MS Office. Even in the few minutes I spent on it, I could see there was no way to color the table background. Here's a screenshot:-

It didn't work as smoothly as I had hoped. I could'nt get the system to send out a notification to a gmail contact and start sharing a document to test its collaboration features.

Maybe Microsoft needs to take a leaf from Google's book, and at least make the service easier to test. Google recently made it possible to test Google Docs without a registration, and all you need to start real time co-editing with others is to share a link with them. Worked without a glitch for me.

Office Web Apps, however is a much looked forward to tool, as it simplifies the transition to the cloud for desktop users who love and are familiar working with MS Office.

All you need to do is visit the Google Docs demo page (docs.google.com/demo) and start typing away in a Google Docs document open right in front of you. No registration required, no Google Account required. WOW! Similarly you can start working on spreadsheets, or even drawings. if you want to collaborate with someone else in real time, just share the link with them.

Since this document will remain on Google's servers for just a day, this new resource has been created more to attract new customers, and educate them about the simplicity of using Google Docs. The move is also an additional step to preempt Microsoft's Office Web Apps and Docs.com (MS's collaboration with FaceBook) before they catch on. In contrast, when i visited Docs.com to test how they compared, this is the message i got.

I still can't stop buzzing in joy at the thought of being able to collaborate in real time on a document without having to log in.