More Google Docs available offline: Spreadsheets, presentations

Google has broadened the number of online applications that people can use offline, adding spreadsheets and presentations to the mix.
However, unlike with word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations can only be viewed, not edited, according to a post by marketing manager Andrew Chang on the Google Docs blog Friday. That's still useful, though. Chang gives the example of giving a slide presentation without having to worry about network access.
The offline access uses the Google Gears technology the search engine giant introduced in 2007 as an open-source project.
Google is trying to take on Microsoft with its online software, but Gartner believes Microsoft poses a greater competitive threat to Google with online ads than Google does to Microsoft with online office suites.
Stephen Shankland covers Google, Yahoo, search, online advertising, portals, digital photography, and related subjects. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered servers, supercomputing, open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen.
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but Gartner believes Microsoft poses a greater competitive
threat to Google with online ads than Google does to Microsoft
with online office suites."
So what if Google used OpenOffice or bought WordPerfect
Office from Corel?
Corel has obviously lost focus on what made WordPerfect great
and they don't appear to know where to go with it. Maybe
Google could buy WordPerfect Office from Corel and split it into
two versions. One that runs from the internet and one that
stays on your computer.
I realize it would take time to make a good web based
WordPerfect but I believe Corel could do it and just keep adding
features to it until WP Office Desktop and WP Office Web
versions looked and worked identically.
Of course I wouldn't want them to mess up WordPerfect. It
would be great to get some of the main people that used to
own WordPerfect to be in charge of the application again. They
"got it" until they messed up and didn't make a Windows
version soon enough.
Then there is the whole thing about Microsoft not telling 3rd
parties about all the APIs it used in Word and Excel to purposely
made 3rd party apps slower... I still think they should be fined
BIG money for that.
continue to make it a Windows app but beef up the Mac OS X
version so there are things that work better on Macs than
Windows computer with WP, etc.
Of course they would need to keep the file format compatible
between OSs.
They could always license a "lite" version of WordPerfect to
Google so that they both share the same file format. Better yet,
use the OpenOffice file format as the default.