Last night Google added support for presentations to Google Docs. Nathan’s on top of the game and offers a solid walk-thru with screenshots and along with some help from Matt Cutts shares how to embed presentations in your webpages using IFRAME.

Remember September 18, 2007 as The Day The Earth Stood Still for Microsoft Office non-enterprise customers.

For those who haven’t seen the 1951 black and white sci-fi flick, it’s about an alien named Klaatu that comes down to deliver an important message to earth about the importance of maintaining peace. As with many alien encounters with earth in movies, Klaatu is met with suspicion and is shot by a scared soldier. A robot with amazing, unworldly powers called Gort appears to protect Klaatu. I won’t spoil the ending, but the movie is so good that it’s being remade for release in Summer 2008.

Now what does this movie have to do with Microsoft Office? Let’s put Microsoft in the role of the skeptic and overreacting military and politicians. They are holding onto a model with one of their two cash cows: Office as an overpriced suite of applications for non-enterprise customers. Google appears to be the benevolent Klaatu, offering all of us the ability to use Office-like applications online for ‘free’ (ad-supported): Word vs. Google Write, Excel vs. Google Spreadsheets and now Powerpoint vs. Google Presentation. And who are you and I?

We are Gort, the powerful robot army of the future, able to choose to enforce document peace here on earth and the internet. Able and willing to choose Google over Microsoft or vice versa.

Ok, yeah, I’m stretching with this analogy but the underlying idea is that while the Google Office suite isn’t an Office killer (I’m not saying that), it is a strong warning that Microsoft needs to do something to compete on the non-enterprise front against Google with Office. They need to get off their butts and offer an Adcenter ad-supported version of Office to compete to a new era of documents creation, management and collaboration that Google continues to grow.

As someone who owns Google stock, you’d think I’d be in favor of Google domination, but I’m not in favor of any company too far in the lead. Competition breeds excellence and I’m hoping today’s sober reality that Microsoft is fading fast from being Joe Consumer’s friend will be the wake-up call. Vista adoption isn’t what Microsoft hoped for no matter how they spin it, the Xbox 360 is now looking at the Nintendo Wii bumper stickers, Zune is a distant second place and Redmond’s soldier of fortune Office is seriously wounded.

My biggest criticism for Google Docs to date — and that is their new official title, BTW — has been the lack of offline connectivity. If you don’t have internet access, it disables the value of most web-based applications. Wise beyond their years, Google continues to work on and refine Google Gears. I wouldn’t call Gears a success yet, more like a work in progress. The day when omnipresent internet exists, Google appears to be in a stronger position than Microsoft for non-enterprise customers.

For the non-enterprise readers, how many are using Gmail more than Outlook? Google Docs and Spreadsheets more than Word and Excel? Do you even see the text ads?

It’s important to separate enterprise customers from non-enterprise because that’s an area where the tables are turned. Google’s suite doesn’t compete with Office for enterprise customers. Before telling me, I’m all wet in the comments, please keep this context in mind.

Does Microsoft doesn’t want to deal with non-enterprise customers any more? What are they doing to prove that? Maybe us Gort should freeze Redmond campus for a day to prove how powerful we are. Google seems to be going for the masses, while Microsoft focuses on the classes. To that strategy, Microsoft best heed the following immortal words:

Klaatu barada nikto [reference].

Did this post make you go hmm?

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