The Missing Format – What could jeopardize Google Docs’ success

Google Docs, Google’s own online suit of document editing tools that competes with Microsoft Office, has seen tremendous success. Well… tremendous success amongst techies maybe, Microsoft still has 95% of the Office market. But in any cases, a lot of people in the tech industry seem to think that Google Docs signs the end for Microsoft Office. I know, I did too.

However, with Microsoft’s soon-to-be free online Office, Google Docs isn’t so great anymore. Docs also has a major flaw, it doesn’t have a format. A docs document is essentially a jumble of non-compliant HTML, and there’s no way to export a Google Docs file accurately. In fact, the closest thing you can get is the HTML export format, but since HTML is so… especially jumbled like that… unstable, it often doesn’t keep its original format (something breaks).

For a lot of Docs users, this isn’t a problem. Arguably, why would you want to export your document, can’t you just share it? Sure, but what if you want to distribute your document for anyone to use? You won’t “globally share” your document. What if you want an offline copy? Google’s offline feature is dependent on Gears’ syncing, not an actual offline file. Yes, you could use PDFs, but PDFs can’t be edited.

Is this a major problem really? If sharing is available, does saving to a file really matter? Arguably it does not, but the whole file format thing brings up this: How does Google’s HTML-based Docs compete against a complete format such as OOXML (Microsoft Office’s ISO standard document format introduced in 2007). Microsoft promises accurate representation of its documents no matter where they are on Office 2010. That means a Word .docx for example, will be just a like a PDF, but editable, and it will display exactly the same Online, on the desktop and on your mobile. That’s really powerful.

And even if Google was to bring its own format, they’re not there yet. In  just a few months, Microsoft will release an Office suite that spans Online, Desktop and Mobile environments, with an ECMA and ISO compliant file format that is accurately represented across platforms. Not to mention Office’s superior editing capabilities (it’s like comparing 1990 software with 2010 software), if anything, Google Docs is going to be playing catch-up in a short while.

I’d like to see Microsoft doing the same kind of turn-around with Internet Explorer.