Google Office: it’s about file formats, not MS Office

Debates in the aftermath of the Google Spreadsheet announcement have climbed the mountains and traversed the valleys of Google's supposed master plan. They've covered the Google vs. Microsoft gorge, the trickling AdSense stream. What they haven't discussed is the file format war, and I suspect that this is far more important than it may at first seem.

These days it's not hard to pitch anything Google does as part of some brilliant strategy to dethrone Microsoft. Despite the fact that the two company's businesses touch at only a few points, the meme is that the two giants are fighting over the same pot of honey. After snapping up Writely, a web-based word processor, Google's eyes looked hungry for Microsoft's Office cash cow. The problem has been that, despite everyone's assumption that the two are locked in battle, it's not clear how a Google Office fits into Google's business plans. The question is made more complicated by the fact that there's currently no shortage of Microsoft Office competitors out there, and some of them are even free. There is no obvious link between Writely and Google Spreadsheet on the one hand, and Google's search business on the other. At least, it's not anything the analysts are talking about.

Standing on the shoulders of open file formats

Even if Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't have designs on toppling Microsoft Office, they do have a vested interest in toppling proprietary file formats (well, save maybe Google's own DRM). After all, what makes Google's Search possible? It's the fact that the Internet is comprised almost entirely of "open" HTML documents. The budding Google empire is built on top of an open file "format" with wide accessibility.

But there's a huge disconnect between the Internet and the rest of the world. While we marvel at the size of the web, we sometimes forgot about the mountains of word processor, spreadsheet, and database information housed "offline." And much of that is proprietary to some extent, stored in file formats that are not accessible or only semi-accessible to your average PC user with a web browser. This is where the Open Document format (ODF) steps in. As you may know, ODF is an open format for word processor, spreadsheet, database, and presentation files, based on XML.

Google's Writely can import Microsoft Word's DOC files, supports viewing and editing HTML documents, and ODF conversion is already supported as well. Google Spreadsheet will support CSV and Excel's file format, XLS, at launch. ODF support is only a matter of time.

In my view, Writely and Google Spreadsheet are ultimately about promoting open file exchange and, eventually, the ODF file format. Much in the same way that Adobe managed to make the PDF ubiquitous by meeting a need and giving away Acrobat Reader, Google can meet the need for casual office application users and can give it away for free. With PDF, people weren't lying in the streets dying for it. It met a need and quickly became the "lowest common denominator" for distributing documents with a modicum of complexity. Adobe even made a few bucks selling PDF creation software (at stiff prices). ODF promises to do the same, but with far more flexibility, and without the expensive software on the creative side of the fence.

A month ago, ODF received approval from the ISO to become an international standard. Some speculate that this has damped Microsoft's chances for succeeding in its push to get approval for its own standard, OpenXML. The thinking is that the ISO won't see the need for two different XML-based standards, so the race has already been won. The prize isn't automatic ubiquity, however. ODF still needs to be used, and this is where Google's Office aspirations come into play.

Google Office isn't going to bury Microsoft Office. Not even close. Those who think it will carry the burden of proof. OpenOffice and the like have already disproved the "if you build it, they will come" thesis. They haven't come, if by "they" we mean a significant percentage of Microsoft Office's user base. This isn't to say that OpenOffice is bad, a failure, or anything else. But it's not taking the corporate world by storm, and it's not taking Joe Consumer's desktop over, either. If OpenOffice was meeting a strongly and widely perceived need, then it, much like Firefox, would be breaking download records and earning serious market share. It's not.