Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, made the announcement at an event held as part of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. This presentation was a logical step considering the web applications presented so far by the company.
Now, Docs and Spreadsheets will include a word processing application, a spreadsheet and a presentation application, but Schmidt has indicated that the suite is not a direct competitor to Office, since Docs and Spreadsheets do not offer all functionality that can be found in Microsoft applications, but it is more geared towards Web collaboration while Office is a desktop application.
The presentation app will be available throughout the summer, as indicated by Jonathan Rochelle (Product Manager, Docs and Sheets).
Like the other two components of Docs and Spreadsheets, the presentation application is designed around the pillars of collaboration and information sharing, so that users can participate in the creation and deployment of presentations.
According to Rochelle, Google has decided to add the presentation component to Docs and Sheets in response to user demand.
The presentation component will have import and export capabilities with Microsoft’s Powerpoint application, in the same way that equivalent functions are found in word processing and spreadsheet applications on Microsoft’s Word and Excel applications.
