There has been so much happening in the NZ political scene over the past few weeks and months that for me to sit here and write something about it would just be pointless. In fact, I’m guessing that for the most part its probably been discussed ad-nauseum and theres probably very little I can add to it that hasn’t already been discussed else where.

So I’m going to avoid talking about politics.

Or I could talk more about whats happening in the ICT industry around the world. Big internet dealings going on. Actually, after Google announced they’re buying DoubleClick last week, this week eBay announced they’ve penned a deal to buy StumbleUpon. This is ironic because Google wanted them too. But given they lost on that deal, Google decided to incorporate StumbleUpon-like features into the Google Toolbar for both IE and Firefox. Go figure eh? ;-)

By now I’m sure everyone has heard of the Spotlight feature within MacOSX 10.4+. While I can make accusations that they got the idea from Beagle (among others) they’re definitely credited with being the first to implement it as a core feature of the OS itself. Microsoft later added similar functionality to Windows Vista, but for a while you needed third party applications to get the functionality from Windows XP.

The first to release it on the Windows platform was Google with their Google Desktop application. However, Yahoo! and Microsoft both quickly followed not long after with their own versions as well. Some would say that the Index service in Windows NT/2000/XP provided this kind of feature but the simple fact was that compared to the “Desktop Search” applications, it was so difficult and unfriendly to use that it was practically worthless for any end user and just wasted resources.

Well, Google decided they were going to port Google Desktop for the Mac platform. They believe they can do better at it than Apple’s own Spotlight and wanted to make it available to the Mac users. Personally, I have no experience with Spotlight. My old G4 Powermac only has MacOS X 10.3 on it. However, of the Windows ones I have used, it is by far the best, beating Yahoo! and Microsoft easily. I really would like to see a version released for Linux to replace Beagle, but thats not likely any time soon. Unfortunate given how big of a pig Beagle becomes rather quickly.

In the eventually-to-be-released Leopard OS that Apple has pushed back till October, there is a new feature called “Time Machine” that essentially allows you to view old versions of files (and a whole lot more) even after you’ve changed them multiple times. Well, in the Google Desktop for the Mac, they’ve included file versioning as one of the features. Think of it as a CVS/Syn repository of all your commonly used files. I can guarantee its definitely not as slick as the Time Machine interface, but the functionality is there.

To add another needle to the works, it also can index and search any file type that has a Spotlight indexer available for it. This means that it can search everything Spotlight can, and then some.

What is not mentioned, but what I’m hoping is the case, is the API used for extensions in this new Mac version. Hopefully its the same as the Windows API so that people can write extensions that will work across both platforms with very little fuss. Google is good at doing this kind of thing, so I do fully expect it. However, I see no mention of a sidebar. It would be nice if the Google Desktop automatically presented extensions and gadgets on the widget pane without needing any special extra coding at the developer end.

Probably not likely in the near future though. I think they’re just trying to get onto the Mac platform with features that Apple are delaying till October’s Leopard release. Very much what they did to Vista. ;-) Its all about mindshare.

Given Google now own a small chunk of AOL, I think it would be a very smart move for them to enter into a partnership deal with Apple for web services. The only thing I can see that would really make it difficult is the Apple .Mac service. An expensive service that isn’t selling well, but must be breaking even given its still alive.

However, that doesn’t offer everything that is available from Google Apps. We know that Google will one day make it easier to communicate with AOL users via Google Talk, which means that it’ll be possible to communicate with Apple iChat users. We also know that the coming Apple iPhone has a very special version of Google Mobile Maps on it.

Another very smart move was the alliance Google entered into with Sun Microsystems in regards to OpenOffice.org and also the deal to buy a lot of Sun hardware. However, they need to start making much more of an effort in their endeavours with OpenOffice.org in the future. Right now, they need to setup the platform to do so. I’ll explain why in a minute.

Why am I suggesting these alliances? Because right now Google is starting to invade quite significantly into Microsoft’s turf. Microsoft is starting to use Vista to take a chunk of market share off Google in several markets, especially search. While I do believe Google when they say that Google Apps does not invade on Microsoft Office territory (the technology is just not capable of completely replacing a desktop app yet) things in the near future will bring it closer to reality. Firefox 3′s ‘offline applications’ feature being one of them. Also, IF Google does offer a version of the Google Mini with the Google Apps suite bundled for those businesses that are really apprehensive about (or legally cannot) outsourcing their document hosting, then we really do start to step on some pretty powerful feet.

Yes, its very true that Google Docs & Spreadsheets (and now Presnetations) is not aimed at replacing a desktop based Office suite. The primary target market is at those that want to collaborate on the process of developing a document. You do the rough and ready collaboration in Google Docs and then once you’ve got things all typed up, you export it out to a local computer and your local office suite to make it nice and pretty and so on. Until its possible to import a sheet or range of cells from Spreadsheets into Docs, or to use a Spreadsheet to create a graph in Docs, you really cannot use Google Docs & Spreadsheets as anything more than a collaboration tool.

But given the cost of Microsoft Sharepoint server, its a damn cheap way of getting functionality that an organisation would be paying thousands for otherwise. US$50/yr per user for the full Google Apps Enterprise suite with all sorts of nifty features (including a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is good by web standards, even if phone companies have to do the 5 9′s) is a pretty decent price in my opinion.

So here’s where we suddenly get back to the Java/OpenOffice.org deal of 2005 that Google entered into with Sun Microsystems. Right now, most of the very noticable stuff that everyone can easily tell is from Google is that Google Docs & Spreadsheets supports the ODF standards for both import and export of documents. This is a pretty major deal, but its only scratching the surface of whats necessary.

OpenOffice.org supports JDBC (and ODBC on Windows) as well as many direct links into a few popular SQL and RDBMS platforms from within its Base application. Microsoft Access has done this via ODBC for a while and more recently has also supported directly linking to back end RDBMS platforms as well (such as SQL Server and so on.)

What if Google were to implement something similar for OpenOffice.org Write and Calc? But instead of using a database of some kind for storing the documents, they were stored and available on the Google Docs platform? :-)

Admittedly there is a commercial platform called O3Spaces that implements a Sharepoint like system for OpenOffice.org already. And compared to Sharepoint, its unbelievably cheap. Up to 100 users will cost you only €59.00 per user. Thats all you pay for it. The software will run on Windows 2000/2003, Solaris 10 (including OpenSolaris) and all major distributions of Linux (including Ubuntu, Redhat and SuSE.)

Taken a step further, o3spaces will also be released as an open source platform “made available in 2007″ however there is no statement that suggests what might be left out of the “free” version.

Did I mention that it also supports Microsoft Office? ;-)

Given the licensing requirements of Sharepoint, this is a pretty significant deal. But its only a single product that takes on a project within Microsoft I very much consider an after-thought.

But what if OpenOffice.org suddenly had the ability to use Google Docs & Spreadsheets? Lets pretend that Google is quietly adding in a certain something to their APIs that will allow OpenOffice.org, KOffice and any others that want to, to use Google Docs for storing, real time collaborative editing and even sharing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations. These are all possible within Google Docs itself now, but imagine if I could work with you on a spreadsheet, you using OpenOffice.org and me using just a browser at a cyber cafe somewhere.

Google has gone to great lengths to stay off the business desktop in any serious market. Their contributions (of which there are many) to OpenOffice.org is the closest they’ll come for now. Yes, they have a lot of desktop applications (such as Google Earth, Picasa and so on) but they’re not business products aimed at the commercial and corporate markets. They’re very much consumer applications.

I’ve made a lot of conjecture in the past about what I think Google might (and should) do with their platforms as far as businesses go. Especially the Google Mini appliance and Google Apps. I think that with this recent expansion into presentations, no matter what Eric Schmidt says, they really are starting to fire a shot across the bow of Microsoft. Not MS Office, but Microsoft Sharepoint. Microsoft aren’t stupid. They recognise that there is encroachment into their turf. Right now they’re too busy looking at how Google Apps is starting to hit on Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange.

But here is the rub.

The next major revolution in office productivity applications will not be from bloated features hardly anyone uses in an office suite. It will come from the ability for people to all work on a document, or multiple documents, together at the same time. That is why Google isn’t aiming at Microsoft Office.

There will always be desktop-based office suites and applications. The web cannot replace everything. Wiki’s are great, but limited. Google Docs and all the many others out there like it are fantastic, and a big step up from a wiki, but can’t achieve anywhere near the same functionality and reliability of a desktop office suite just yet.

Will it happen in the future? Who knows for sure. Microsoft will do whatever they can to hold on to their Office Suite money maker. It generates a huge amount of their income. As in so big that they’d be a very very different company tomorrow if everyone switched right now. In fact, I personally consider it to be a bigger earner than Windows. Companies will upgrade their version of Windows for the latest version of MS Office. Those in that trap will not want, nor need, any other reason to upgrade.

But will any of this happen rapidly? Say within the next 5 years. Not unless I’m extremely lucky or Google likes my ideas and “borrows” them. ;-) The average Joe Homeuser would probably skip Microsoft Office and head for OpenOffice.org if they were offered the choice and saw the long term price difference. But before thats even remotely possible, Microsoft has to start behaving when it comes to companies trying to market/ship an OS other than Windows on their computers. Microsoft also needs to start reconsidering where the company is right now as far as the quality and usefulness of the products they’re release.

For example, Vista has been a massive flop and not even worth the money. Microsoft Office 97 is still just as useful today, as far as creating documents goes, as Microsoft Office 2007 is. For example, hands up those of you that use all the features of Microsoft Office? Hands up those of you, with experience of both, that can explain why Office 2007 is so much better than Office 97, without using marketing speech.

Okay, so maybe some of you can list some useful features of Office 2007 thats not available in Office 97.

Wow, this is huge now. :-/ Better stop there. Otherwise I’ll be rambling all night and never get any sleep ;-)

Ciao.