Oversize #24: Google shakes off its inertia, takes aim at competition

Why read this story?

Editor's note: “Ever found yourself trading email attachments with several colleagues, trying to collaborate on a document, only to have someone chime in at the last moment with corrections to an outdated version? Or emailing yourself a document just so you can move it from one computer to another?” That was the pitch Google made 15 years ago as it announced Google Docs & Spreadsheets, the company’s web-based word-processing and spreadsheet product, in 2006. It was a game-changing pitch in a world dominated by Microsoft Office and other productivity software sold in boxes for home and work use—offline, that is. In the first wave, the always-connected folks jumped in. It was free and available in a browser—with seamless sharing and collaboration—even if the features were limited. As the internet became more ubiquitous, documents as shared links instead of siloed files made sense. Then, Google started making its enterprise pitch and steadily, from startups to small and medium-sized businesses to corporations, Google’s consumer apps for collaboration and communication went mainstream at work as well. Yet, nothing much changed with the offering itself in …