Google Apps and Openoffice

I am a very avid user of Google Apps. (NASDAQ:GOOG) I like it a lot. The Style I have always used Google Spreadsheets and documents is that I create the first version of my document(in excel or word) on my laptop and then upload it to google apps. Google is pretty good at keeping the original Excel or Word as intended. The ongoing maintainence of the document and sharing with other users is what I use google for.

Now will my style of functioning change when lets say Google adds more features to its application. I think probably not. The inherent latency in network to switch between tabs , data entry etc will always remain. Frankly when I am creating the baseline document I have a lot keyboard activity and since the document is in design stage I keep on iterating over how the document shoud be made. With the high keyboard activity in the early stages of document creation I have found that Google spreadsheet and documents to be limiting me and annoying from a response time standpoint.

So , where does open office(NASDAQ:SUNW) fit in ?

Well to have a viable alternative to Microsoft (MSFT) , google needs to understand that it needs to have desktop option. If it does not MSFT will be fast to catch up on the webification of office and it will take over google's initial gains.

The viable option at this time is open office. While there is already an alliance between SUN and Google in place , I am not sure if it has led to anything tangible.

Unless there is intigration between Google Apps and openoffice at the levels of feature intrigration, distribution intigration and messaging the alliance will not be successful.