To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (69 ) 8/28/2006 12:55:23 AM From: Lizzie Tudor Respond to of 348 the best article I have found on this. In Depth: Google Discloses Plans For Long-Awaited Office Suite, First Components Due This Week Google this week will launch Google Apps for Your Domain, a software bundle aimed at small and midsize companies. The free, ad-supported package combines Google's E-mail, calendar, and instant messaging with Web site creation software. It will be hosted in Google's data center, branded with customers' domain names, and packaged with management tools for IT pros. That's the first step. Later this year, Google plans to add its Writely word processor and Google Spreadsheets to the suite, build online collaboration features that work across its applications, and market the whole package to large companies for a fee. Google will include IT-friendly features such as APIs, directory-server integration, guaranteed performance levels, and telephone tech support. Instead of trying to displace the hundreds of millions of copies of Office installed on business PCs, Google will try to snare users once they start sharing the Word and Excel files they've created. "The right way to view Writely and Google Spreadsheets, especially in the context of a larger business, isn't necessarily as a replacement for Word or Excel," says Matt Glotzbach, head of enterprise products at Google. "They're the collaboration component of that."Collaboration, though, is exactly where Microsoft sees its best growth prospects for Office. It plans to sell higher-priced versions of Office plus add-on servers with built-in collaboration features when it launches Office 2007 later this year. informationweek.com