Connecting Office to the cloud with Cloud Connect

If Microsoft is the evil empire, then their Office Suite is their “Death Star” – a product of epic proportions. 500 million users just about qualifies the suite as epic. And just like the Death Star it has a huge vulnerability and can be taken down in a swift and calculator attack.

Google may have found the chink in Microsoft’s armor, and it comes in the form of an uber-simple app dubbed Cloud Connect.

Cloud Connect is a plugin-style app that allows users to sync up their Office documents with Google’s online office-style suite Google Docs.

The struggling Google Docs has yet to grab any mainstream appeal, possibly due to corporations’ fear of cloud-based computing. But – finally, Google Docs will begin grabbing the market share they deserve via Cloud Connect.

Cloud Connect allows users to sync up and work collaboratively in the cloud, using all the Office features they are used to (well, not all). Cloud Connect can be used from any PC, laptop, netbooks, or smartphone due to the unique URL given by Google Docs.

The timing from Google’s Rebel Alliance strike couldn’t be more perfect as Microsoft’s Office 365 is just beginning to pick up steam. Office 365 is an online version of the Office Suite-glaringly similar to Google Docs.

Currently Cloud Connect has mild performance issues when it comes to synchronization and loss of formatting – problems not faced by Microsoft’s answer to Cloud Connect, Microsoft’s Web Apps for Office.

Microsoft has publicly attacked the new collaborative solution from Google, especially by Jennifer Kensok, Product Manager at Microsoft who attacked the flaws with gusto when she wrote in Microsoft’s blog “… and to top it all off, when you decided to edit this file in the browser, Google Docs actually had to create a second version of the file (a Google Docs version), so the original is still an Excel file, and now you’ve got this poorly formatted Google Docs version to reconcile, too.”

It is too early to tell if this will be the final blow to the Office Death Star from the concentrated Google laser, only time will tell. But the tech community is routing for Google to knock Microsoft off their high horse.