Dave Girouard, the president of Google’s enterprise division, made an interesting admission earlier today, acknowledging that Google Docs isn’t right for the average person. But Girouard also made an interesting prediction, putting Google Docs about a year away from seriously challenging Microsoft Office.
Let’s look at the current state of things first. According to Victoria Ho, Girouard said that Google Docs is “much less mature” than other Google products, and he later continued, “We wouldn’t ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet.”
You can almost imagine a marketing team trying to tackle Girouard right then; such honesty probably won’t do Google Docs much good in the short term.
Still, the fact that Girouard (who’s spent almost six years with Google) was willing to face reality makes his forecast more noteworthy. And Girouard indicated that a number of Google Docs updates will land next year, at which point businesses should be able to “get rid of Office if they chose to.”
That’s more the sort of message Google’s marketing team could (and quite possibly will) get behind.
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