As if Google was seemingly cloning Microsoft’s Office Suite, the ability to create presentations (similar to Powerpoint) will be added to Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets family this summer, according to an announcement made by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. 

The technology behind the new presentation software comes from Google’s recently acquired company, Tonic Systems, who specializes in Java presentation automation products and solutions for document management.

Schmidt announced the presentation feature in a comical way to participants at the Web 2.0 Expo on Tuesday, showing several slides to the audience after which he said, “none of these are really the announcement, but in fact the thing that is doing this presentation is the announcement.”

The collaboration feature in Docs & Spreadsheets will also be include allowing documents to be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time.

“Now students, writers, teachers, organizers, and, well, just about everyone who uses a computer can look forward to having real-time, web-based collaboration across even more common business document formats,” said Google Engineering Director, Sam Schillace, on the official Google blog.

While the presentation features will not be available until summer, Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets currently offers a word processor and spreadsheets.

Schmidt added that Google was not trying to compete with Microsoft by offering nearly every principal component that is available in Microsoft Office, but said Google’s simply doing some cool stuff with online collaboration inside of productivity programs, for free.

But that’s coming from Mr. Google himself, It’s obvious that Google is in competition with Microsoft. The office is changing, and Google, with their Web 2.0 Docs & Spreadsheets, mirrors the way people use the Internet today.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 4:35 am under Google.

Read more entries by George Gardner.
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