Should you switch from Office to Google Apps?

[mandy]

Google's new web-based office software suite, which the company announced Thursday, is a swift kick to the teeth delivered squarely in the direction of Microsoft. Or is it?

Google Apps Premier Edition is a collection of office tools for businesses -- word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail, calendar and web page creator -- all of which are accessible through a web browser. Pricing is set at $50 per user per year, less expensive than Microsoft Office but with much the same functionality. Microsoft has its own web-based suite of tools in Office Live, but the company's offering doesn't match Google's. And Google isn't going after Office Live, it's going after Office.

The suite and others like it are visions of a possible future when all software will be delivered over the internet. Does the arrival of Google Apps Premier Edition signal the death of desktop software dinosaurs like Microsoft Office?...

full article: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/sof...n_index_18

[rose]

Should you switch from Office to Google Apps?

Should you switch from Microsoft Office and Google Apps to OpenOffice? Yes! Pricing is $0. 

[mandy]

Update:

An alert reader, SentryWatch, commented per my last blog that the Terms of Service posted on the Google Docs and Spreadsheets site assigns content rights of anything saved on Doc and Spreadsheets to Google. It’s almost too incredible to believe, so here’s the wording from the mighty Google maw itself:

“… you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services…”

full article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Greenbaum/?p=130