Acrobat.com vs Google Docs

Over the past year, FedEx earned about half a billion dollars on transfering paper documents. It proves that the electronic signature market will continue to grow rapidly. Adobe (aka the giant of the electronic documents space) also understands this. Last week Adobe acquired the most successful electronic signature service - EchoSign. Adobe intends to close its own service eSignatures (which was still in beta) and integrate EchoSign into its SaaS suite Acrobat.com. However, if you look at what Acrobat.com has recently become, this news is likely to be less of a cause for celebration than commiseration with EchoSign’s users and fans.

Now it's time for another portion of criticism towards the Acrobat.com online office. The last time we reviewed the service, they introduced many useful features, but now they are doing strange things again. Although the press release looks nice: Acrobat.com added online collaboration work-spaces. In fact, they added only shared folders were you can invite your co-workers / clients for file collaboration. Previously, it was possible to share only separate files. So there is more PR than improvements made during several months. Besides Adobe decided that online shared folders - it is so demanded tool on the market that they can make money on it. Although the cost of service was not risen, but the free version allows to create only one workspace (shared folder), and the Premium Basic plan (which costs $15/month) - is limited to 20 shared folders. In addition (very odd) you can't access shared folders on your mobile device (Blackberry and iPhone).

Online office suite Acrobat.com is still like a dress at the fashion show - beautiful, expensive, and you can wear it only on the podium. But in Adobe continues to work hard, update the service and step by step it becomes more ready for business. The other day Acrobat.com added 35 new features. And the first feature we were pleased to see is the idea voting system Acrobat.com Ideas. The main new feature inside the service is the new structure based on file manager. Now, all files are stored in one place and the main menu of service contains only 2 tabs: Files (for file management) and Meetings (for web-conferencing).

After (just) six years after the first rumors appeared Google has launched the legendary file storage service Google Drive. And the first question is: why they created Google Drive as a separate service, when Google Docs is de-facto Google's online storage that can store any files? There is a couple of reasons. First, such file storage and sharing services (Dropbox and clones) is a very hot topic either in consumer or enterprise space. And the attention that Google can attract with the new app in this space is not a bad thing for the search giant. Second, Google Drive will serve as a file system not only for Google Docs, but also for other Google's services that operate files (GMail, Google +, Google Sites, Picasa ...).

Remember the recent Microsoft's comic video about Google Apps? One of the claims against Google's online office was its bad spell-checker. But probably Microsoft won't joke about it any more. Because Google has pulled out its secret weapon - the world's largest search database that contains more words than any dictionary. You certainly noticed that when you make a spelling error in a search query, Google automatically corrects it? Now the same technology will work in Google Docs. Unlike the traditional dictionary (in Word), Google's base is constantly updated - adds new words and contains not only words but also names and titles in any language. However, meanwhile the new spell-checker is deployed only for English language, but Google promises to add it to other languages soon.

Google continues to improve its office suite and it's not trying to race with MS Office for the rich functionality, but improves what it does best - collaboration tools and mobile access. Today the new version of Google Docs for Android has appeared and it allows to collaboratively edit documents on smartphones and tablets in real-time. As usual, each user is assigned a certain color, so you can see who's editing text at the moment and where he is now. In addition, the new version improves the user interface features - zoom, copy/paste and adds new formatting tools: bold text, lists, font color. The good news is that all of these new features will work in older Android versions - up to version 2.1

Microsoft continues to troll Google services with funny videos. At this time, they take on Google Docs. According to the scenario a group of young co-workers wants to creat a document and starts working on it in Google Docs. Naive guys don't know that Google Docs are only suitable for simple tasks and drawing a planetary system in Google Docs - is impossible. But it's possible in Microsoft SkyDrive. Even not in the Skidrive itself (it also can't do such complicated formatting) but in the desktop MS Office, that can edit the document simultaneously with the online SkyDrive editor. Note that Microsoft has removed the title Windows Live Office, which was used from the start to refer the online office, and now is using SkyDrive (that formerly was used to refer only the file storage).

The popular online file storage service DropBox - is in danger. And this danger comes from Google Docs. The fact that before now DropBox had one great advantage over Google Docs - it could synchronize files between online account and several computers. Now this opportunity has become available for the users of Google Docs / Google Apps, and for free. Actually you need only to pay for disk space (over 1GB), but it's much cheaper in Google Docs than in DropBox. And all this - thanks to the startup InSync. It becomes free and not due to business problems, but right after almost $1 million funding. InSync runs almost invisible - you just create a folder on your PC or Mac and it syncs with Google Docs account (watch the video). Google Apps users can create shared folders for the entire company.

Google continues to compete with Zoho and SlideRocket for being the online presentations champion. Today Google rolled out completely new Google Presentations editor. It adds more than 60 new features, but the main one - is the ability to collaborate on a presentation in real-time. Everything is very similar to collaborative tools in Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets that appeared last year: in the right pane you can see who is currently working on the presentation, chat with them. And in the presentation view, you can see what objects the collaborators are currently editing (these object are highlighted with the corresponding colors). And with the help of Google+ Hangouts you can even video chat with colleagues while co-creating the presentation.

Lebanese developer's hack, which allowed text collaboration in Google+ Hangouts didn't remain a hack so long. Today's Google+ update has added much more new features to Hangouts. First, it's an opportunity to share your screen (Screen-sharing). Second, is the ability to collaboratively draw on a whiteboard. Third, is the ability to collaboratively edit Google Docs documents. Fourth, is the ability to create broadcasts for the unlimited number of viewers (the number of active participants is limited to 10). Fifth, Google Hangouts videochat now works on Android-smartphones. And finally, sixth, Google has opened the official API for Hangouts, so you don't need to hack it, as the Lebanese programmer in order to create your own application for Hangouts. By the way, the social network Google + is now open to all. Is your company ready for this?