After Apple began offering its office suite for free with all new iOS devices, Google's decision makes sense. However I now have both Google Drive and Quickoffice on my Android smart phone and tablet. These two products overlap a bit too much. They really ought to be a single app.
If you press the Google Drive button in QuickOffice, it will basically show you what you have in Google Drive, just like the Google Drive app. But yeah, not sure why they're keeping the Drive app around then.
I don't think of it as an "office app" at all, and it would frankly kind of bizarre to have to use QuickOffice to get at the various tar files, html files, image files, etc, that I've put into G.D....
If anything they should really just share components, with Google Drive invoking Q.O. document editors as appropriate, and maybe a Q.O. app remaining as a thin "office-oriented" frontend (whatever that means).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Quickoffice used to allow signing in from multiple services? I remember using an older version of Quickoffice that allowed logging in with Dropbox, SkyDrive, etc. while this new version appear to only work with Google accounts.
After reading about the Quickoffice acquisition I was waiting for this moment. Google Drive has more features in the web than as a native application on iOS and Android.
Edit: it's me or Quickoffice is complete crap? I tried opening a document in Google Docs and it opens as PDF! then I created a new document and it doesn't have headings, just like the Google Drive application.
If you read the app description, its for working with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Anything else is outside its domain. Its not a replacement for Google Docs for working with Google Docs native formats.
> If you read the app description, its for working with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.
"No no no, if it's a Word file you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green circle to edit it, if it's a native google document you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green hexagon to edit it."
"You don't know what type of document it is? No problem, you can tell by... Open it up in one of the two apps and tell me what the file extension is. The file extension. The three of four letters at the end. Wait a sec, forget that, native google docs documents don't have file extensions."
["Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square." - I was wrong about this, word files do have a different icon]
"Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one."
> Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.
"If you need to edit things in Drive, use the Drive app."
There are some use cases where the QO app makes sense, but its solving a fairly narrow problem that doesn't apply to most users.
> Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square
What are you talking about? The icon for Word files in both the QO UI and the Drive app UI is a big blue W on a white square, and is nothing like the 3-long-1-short white lines on a blue square icon for Google Documents.
> Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one.
The Drive edits Doc/Docx files; if for some reason you don't like using the Drive App to do that, you can switch to QO from the document opened in Drive by using the "Open in..." menu from Drive to open a document in QO.
I've just tried it, and no, it can't. On the webapp, editing is done by converting to google docs format; that option doesn't seem to be available on mobile. It can't even view them natively, if QO isn't installed it appears to show them in a web viewer. Only quickoffice can edit .doc/.docx's. But you're right you can open a .doc in QO from drive (assuming it's installed, it'll register an intent), which does alleviate the problem.
But it's still silly, and confusing for non-technical users, to have two similarly-designed office apps, published by the same company, which can each edit a mutually-exclusive set of document formats. And that using intents to edit works one way but not the other. I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.
On the other hand you're right about the icon. My mistake, I'll correct my post.
> I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.
I would be too; it worth noting that doing separate things in overlapping-but-not-identical domains and then merging them over time (especially when one is an acquisition, like QO) isn't really unusual for Google (and increasing the overlap on the way to merger isn't unusual, either.)
QO's been around for quite a long time, and is a fairly recent acquisition. Its not a new offering, the news here is that its just been made free.
if i click on a docx in the google drive app, it uses the intents system to open in quickoffice. its only if i try to open a google drive document in quickoffice that it has a problem. So if you have a technologically inept relative, the solution is simple - just tell them to use google drive for everything, and never use quickoffice.
which i'm sure is exactly what google wants. they want you creating documents in their format, not in microsoft's format. quickoffice exists to tick off the "MS Office compatibility" checkbox on spec sheets, not because google loves that file format so much. and office documents don't get the realtime collaborative editing or chat interface or any of the other stuff that drive documents get, so to reduce confusion about why some features are unavailable, it makes sense to keep it as a separate app.
i think they will too, but i think the point is that they don't want to. Microsoft office support in Drive is like SMS support in Hangouts. They know people want it, but it's an outside-the-ecosystem technology that they want to die, and they're hoping that if they hold off supporting it for long enough demand will go away.
Beyond the downvote to my comment, I think the same complain will be amplified by a lot of people beyond if it's in the app description or not. Currently, with hundreds of applications installed on the PC and mobile devices nobody reads every app description, they just assume certain features. You can't RTFM for every application installed.
> I installed Quickoffice acquired by Google to read documents. I don't assume that I need to read any description.
QuickOffice was always a MSOffice formats editing tool for mobile devices. Its never been a generic document reader. You assumed, for no discernable reason, that it was.
Maybe you should re-evaluate your assumptions about the need to read descriptions of apps before you install and run them.
I never understood the hype around quickoffice, it has never been my office app of choice. Now OfficeSuite is a pretty neat piece of mobile office software...
Whatever i see things like this, it reminds me the way the greeks used to see the gods.. as jokers messing around with humans, much like politicians do to us nowadays.. (cause this must be a joke from the gods)
in the eighties the allmighty IBM get crushed by the rookie
microsoft because it didnt see the new software wave comming..
and from this new market its arch-enemy was born
now microsoft is falling into pieces, because microsoft in the nineties, didnt see the internet revolution comming (or was afraid to ask), and its killer born from it.
google its not only taking what once was a market dominated by microsoft, but are dominating also in the internet arena.. and if you guys see well .. they have created a "internet as a platform", buying and acquiring all over
the ones who create little niches in this BIG massive platform..
my question is.. it will have internet life outside of the google internet platform? and worst yet..
it will have life outside of the corporate internet the took all over? (the people who knew the internet in the beggining of times know what im talking about)
before us all were considered products and advert targets?
You question is whether the internet will consist of anything other than Google? Yes, it will.
The internet remains the internet; Google is not creating "the internet as a platform".
Fractured English is usually quite tolerable as long as it's somewhat coherent, but when it comes in the form of a nonsensical rant I find it exponentially less so.
Im not telling, that they ARE already "the platform"
im saying that they are trying, that they are slowly becoming.. and if you try to measure
in what proportion google services, servers, softwares and platforms
make part of the internet, and all the things, software and services you have installed
in your machines that are, or consume things from google, will you still think this is a triviality?
Also, there are the inner mechanics of capitalism, with its acquisitions and
fusions.. and quickoffice its a example of that..
on the other side, the small companies wont stand against delicious buying offers of billions
of dollars..
Capitalism its all about monopoly, isnt?
so.. 2 + 2 = ..
Eric schimidt maybe is a small guy, but what a appetite.. :)
>"I'm not saying that they are ALREADY "the" platform, I'm saying that they are trying to be, and are slowly becoming just that.
>If you try and measure what portion of the internet is made up of Google's services/products/infrastructure and what portion of your own personal device usage depends on those services, would you still think this isn't something to worry about?
> Also, something about capitalism, words that have little to do with it... and quickoffice is an example of that.
> On the other hand small companies will accept large buyouts.
> Capitalism is all about monopolies isn't it? So 2+2 = 'obvious point you should be getting'
> Schmidt Quip
I understand your point, and to some degree I agree that it's worth thinking about, but certainly not worth lamenting over. Expanding infrastructure and buying up companies in areas of interest are obvious choices for a successful company.
Capitalism is about competition, not monopolies, and as long as Google has competition in the form of Amazon/Microsoft/etc. there's no point wasting time worrying about a potential future monopoly on "the internet".
I agree with you that Google is moving into an area Microsoft used to be in with IBM, but I feel like Google, while it does nice things like this, is similarly going to the same location. There's nothing stopping from other companies from coming up with something similar; the problem for now is adoption.
I'd like to find a document editor outside of the major competitors like Microsoft and Google, but to be honest, the others are frankly terrible by comparison. When that changes, at least in the document area, Google is going to rethink what they're doing or buy them out (which is also possible).
The one thing that ties all of these services together for now is Gmail. Because it serves as a single login, it makes transition to other Google owned products easier. Besides being good at the services they provide, this is the real grease in the wheels that makes the whole machine run.
We're already seeing other services crop up to fill the niche YouTube is filling. Vimeo, for example, is actually quite good. While it doesn't have a lot of the silly videos and stupid clips YouTube is famous for, it's got a lot of creative people making beautiful content. But tying Vimeo to a document editing platform?
>We're already seeing other services crop up to fill the niche YouTube is filling.
The biggest feature of YouTube, in my opinion, is not the video hosting. Rather it is the content discovery mechanism which, even as a programmer, I can best describe as black magic.
Latency on mobile for editing would be kind of sketchy much of the time I would think. Maybe not so bad on wifi, but elsewhere you're lucky to get pings that are sub 200ms on 3G networks.
Also, the stock browser on Android (the non Chrome one) and also the one built into Android Webviews in apps has no websocket support.
