How Google Stole My Desktop (From Microsoft)

After using Google applications for about a year, The VAR Guy recently realized he’s reached a tipping point: He now uses seven Google applications far more often than he uses Microsoft Office. Here’s a quick look at each online application, and it’s impact on The VAR Guy’s productivity.

First, one caveat: The VAR Guy isn’t suggesting that Google apps will fully replace Microsoft Office. Rather, he believes Google apps will coexist with Office for the most part.

So how does The VAR Guy leverage Google apps? Here’s a look:

1. Google Spreadsheets: Chances are, you’re like The VAR Guy: You’ve wasted hundreds of hours in your career emailing spreadsheets to peers, only to have trouble determining who has the most current version of a financial report, staff list, etc. Google Spreadsheets eliminates that confusion. The VAR Guy, for instance, uses Google Spreadsheets to manage speaker invites to conferences. He can invite peers to view and update the online spreadsheets, ensuring that all the key staff members have easy access to target speaker names and contact info, etc.
2. Google Docs: The VAR Guy is just getting started with this applet. He’s using it to write and share business ideas with key peers. Like a Wiki, he can invite readers to view and edit the online documents. Sweet.
3. Google Analytics: This is The VAR Guy’s business intelligence window for Web site management. Using Google Analytics, The VAR Guy can quickly check his online traffic patterns, most popular stories, traffic by geography, etc. This is a powerful tool with a consumer-like user interface that resembles Quicken charts and graphs.
4. Google Blogger: Although TheVARguy.com is built on WordPress, The VAR Guy is experimenting more and more with Google Blogger as a potential platform for future Web sites. He’s not sure if the Google blogging system is sophisticated enough for business use. A few more weeks of testing should provide the answer.
5. Google Adwords: From time to time, The VAR Guy uses Google Adwords to promote his site. The system allows him to easily set up and enforce online advertising budgets. This is still a work in progress but it looks promising.
6. Google Maps: A tool that will gain more and more visibility on this site and MSPmentor.net in the months to come. Imagine if you could pinpoint The VAR Guy’s location any hour of the day.
7. Google Gmail: The VAR Guy is available at thevarguy [at] gmail.com, though he manages personal email from an old Yahoo Mail account that he set up in 2001.

Perhaps best of all, The VAR Guy logs into Google once to see a dashboard containing links to all of his online applications. It’s as if The VAR Guy’s desktop has moved directly into his FireFox Web browser. Nice.

Naturally, Microsoft is introducing many online applications through its Microsoft Live service. But The VAR Guy is hooked on Google’s applications — mostly because the Google Analytics dashboard is so friendly and powerful.

Even better, he can access and edit all online documents from his Mac at work, his Windows PC at home or even his new Ubuntu Linux PC — which should arrive from Dell in the next few days. File format headaches across different operating systems are now a thing of the past.

Looking ahead, The VAR Guy expects to continuing using Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint quite a bit, but Excel has been relegated to a backup tool for storing Google Spreadsheets offline.

Ah, and there’s the biggest catch of all: Naturally, you’re going to need reliable Internet access to build, manage, share and navigate all of these online content components. And for some users who need the financial power of Excel or the sophisticated editing capabilities of Word, Google’s online tools won’t be much of an option.

For the rest of us, Google’s apps are coming on strong.