Moving to Google Docs would be a big step backwards in functionality. Word + Dropbox is perfect because it combines cloud availability with native capability.
If you want me to switch, you need to offer something better. The ability to handle the organization of large documents would be a great start. I'd love something with the features of http://www.bartastechnologies.com/products/copywrite/ would be awesome. CopyWrite is only for Mac and I don't want to switch OSes just for a word processor . . .
Google Docs would definitely be more trusted if it worked a bit more like dropbox. Special folder where docs were automatically synced to. Browser + Finder = redundancy and assurance.
So? Programmers aren't the target market, regular office workers who use MS Office are the targets. It's easier to sell a manager on the idea of using Google Docs when you have a list of features rather than just a brand-name.
"Go Google" is a good slogan I think, and the list of features will start to become associated with it. People still think that Google is a search engine company. I think they're trying to re-brand themselves, at least for one target market.
It bothers me because of the associations it brings to mind. This style of advertising is indicative of the kind of product development that google is supposed to stand against. When I see such an ad, my first reaction is to think "if you have to advertise like this..."
Of course there are all kinds of good reasons and places to talk about features. This way of doing it just feels tacky.
Google Apps doesn't cut it for more than a casual business user. The spreadsheet is hideously slow and doesn't integrate with the real data sources that organisations use, there is no equation editor for docs (a big risk if you ask me when someone technical comes along) and due to the "cloud" nature, it doesn't deal with the legal and confidentiality requirements of most businesses. It's also lacking in OOB solutions like invoices, purchase orders and reasonable looking templates etc.
Word 2007, Excel 2007 and TortoiseSVN (which has the ability to merge excel and word docs) any day. If you're cheaping out, OpenOffice is still much better.
In my business, the sharing feature of Google Apps trumps all of the missing features that you mention.
It does mean that the use cases for Google Apps are all subtly different from their Office counterparts. Yes, the spreadsheet isn't for classic spreadsheet applications (like financial projections or heavy-duty number crunching); it's better suited as a kind of HTML table display that's easy to update and can do simple sums. The word processor is like a very fancy WYSIWYG HTML editor -- but, in a world where almost nothing that I type is destined for print, that feels quite appropriate to me.
Very few people in my company generate invoices or POs. When I did so as a freelancer I used special-purpose web apps.
There are also special-purpose equation editors (Mathtype) for the two people in your organization who actually use them on a regular basis. (I used them far more in school than I ever did in real life. I managed to work half a decade as a research physicist without touching one more than twice. Sheets of paper are a marvelous invention. ;)
Err, we just use TortoiseSVN for document management. The documents go in with the source code.
You can merge stuff, have multiple authors working on the same document, get a full revision history and do all that other junk that Google docs does. Plus it's in house, works over the web (over https) and can safely be delivered over our VPN solution without having to rely on a 3rd party like Google for security, storage and availability.
There is a LOT of benefit in being able to wake up our sysadmin and fix something that is down rather than wait on Google to do it.
Word costs us virtually nothing thanks to MAPS[1] from microsoft which gives us 10x Vista, 10x Office for $350 the lot (for internal use) and a couple of copies of windows 2008 server and an exchange license.
There's no point in fishing out $100 for mathtype - Word 2007 is very close now.
One thing Microsoft has that Google doesn't: the ability to keep working even when the 'net goes down. People who think the 'net doesn't go down: haven't used it long enough, in a production environment.
Ah, well I was not aware of this - you learn something new every day. Glad you explained this to me, because it seems that its a common perception, even if its not true, that Google apps need a 'net connection. I will now investigate the truth (got no use for Google Docs or MS Word, personally) and attempt to correct it when I hear that line again ..
