Google Docs upgrades hit at Microsoft's core

One advantage to producing cloud-based applications is that you can upgrade them instantly to all of your users – instead of updating client software through, say, Windows Update to who-knows-how-many customers.

Google has updated its Microsoft Office competitors, Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets, to add more features with which most Office users are already familiar. It's part of Google's ongoing move to lure customers off Microsoft's client-based platform to Google's cloud-based one.

The "what's new" list isn't all that sexy, but it's significant to the productivity sector.

Google has improved the import function for Google Docs, added document rulers and tab stops, and tweaked image wrapping. Google also improved real-time editing so that users can see, character-by-character, what edits their colleagues are making in shared documents.

"We also added another popular feature from spreadsheets: sidebar chat, so you can discuss documents as you work on them with colleagues," Jonathan Rochelle, a Google group product manager, wrote on the Official Google Docs Blog.

In Spreadsheets, users can now edit cells from the formula bar, auto-fill a cell, drag and drop columns, and more easily navigate among spreadsheets. Google also added a separate editor for Google Drawings, which can be used to create diagrams.

"Even very large spreadsheets are fast to work with in your browser now," Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, wrote on the Official Google Blog. "Applications that run this fast feel like desktop applications but have the unique advantages of being in the cloud."