MattSnodBlog

Can you smell it? A storm's a brewin'. You can almost see on the horizon that something ugly is headed our way. It's an all-out, knock-down brawl between Apple and Google.

Business Week ran a great article last week on this, and it's evident that something's gotta give. Let's face it, as the years progress, each is encroaching on the other's sandbox.

• Apple comes out with a phone OS, Google comes out with Android.
• Apple releases the iPhone, Google releases the Nexus One.
• Apple develops their Safari Web browser, Google comes out with Chrome.
• Google acquires mobile advertising company AdMob, Apple goes after Quattro Wireless.
• Apple works with TomTom on a for-pay GPS app, Google offers their turn-by-turn directions for free.
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt stepped down as Apple board member last year.

Expect more tough back and forth between these two as the phone carrier wars heat up later this year when Apple's exclusive contract with AT&T expires.

At first, I was very skeptical about cloud computing, specifically word processing and spreadsheets. I couldn't wrap my head around relinquishing access and direct control over my documents to something other than a hard drive that was no more than three feet away. I'm sure you, too, have been burned by server crashes that have wreaked havoc on your Word docs on a shared server. Still, Microsoft Word always kept a local copy that was never more than ten minutes old. To boot, the hacking of Twitter's sensitive Google Docs further justified my apprehension.

However, I'm a realist ... a pragmatist ... and a technologist. But what happens when these attributes conflict, as is the case with trusting cloud computing? First, the realist in me understands that cloud computing / online document management is where things are headed. Why fight it? 'Nuff said. The pragmatist in me knows that cloud computing introduces more points of failure (Internet connection, remote servers, hackers). The technologist in me loves the idea of real-time access to all of my documents, well beyond the benefits of a USB jump drive. Let's face it ... where do you go nowadays that you don't have at least some level of Internet connectivity. (Answer: The one place you'll need that document the most.)

I already do some level of cloud computing with Apple's MobileMe file storage service, but adding the capability to edit and collaborate on documents takes it to a whole new level. That said, I've decided to jump in and start porting my documents over to the cloud where I can both access and edit them from (nearly) everywhere. The big-player options:

• Google Docs. I've used Google Docs before when collaborating on a document or spreadsheet in my work with the ADM to some success. As with all collaboration editing, it gets a little hairy when a lot of people try to edit something. It's like five people trying to make a batch of cookies all at the same time.
• Google Wave. This is really just an expanded implementation of Google Docs, but the principles are the same. Plus, I'm really looking forward to using the collaborative functionality of Wave and its gadgets for work use. However, for personal use, I think I'll stick with the simpler tools.
• Acrobat BuzzWord. It seems like Adobe looked at the mistakes of others before releasing this slick update. They really hit it out of the park with this iteration. BuzzWord maintains the core functionality that's critical to word processing (text, paragraphs, images, etc.) yet made it so elegant and user-friendly. To look at BuzzWord and Google Docs side-by-side, I think one would naturally gravitate towards BuzzWord, if only for its design. With this (and Google Docs), you can create PDFs of your work, which is recommended for delivering a finished, uneditable version of your work. Note: with BuzzWord, you can only export five PDFs for free.
• AjaxWrite. This one can read and write MS Word files and is completely free. In fact, it feels a lot like early versions of MS Word. The two main drawbacks are that it only works in Firefox, and it's a bit slow. I often have to wait for it to load a blank document. Seriously?

For me, the only feasible options are Google Docs (formerly Writely) and Adobe BuzzWord, the former for being more ubiquitous, the latter for being ... well ... cooler. It's a shame that whichever route we go with online word processing, they all feel the need to pay homage to the Microsoft Word mother ship. Hell, I'd love to use Apple's Pages, but who else will be able to open a .pages file? Everyone knows what a Word DOC is.

As much of an Apple fanboi as I am, I must say that I really like Bing, Microsoft's latest search engine. It's simple, produces good results, and I get a kick out of the pleasant images they present you daily. After some initial critical success and a marketing surge by Microsoft, it quickly jumped to a 10% share of search, which is not an easy task, considering Google's standing dominance in that area.

However, the 6-month-old search engine seems to have leveled off, if not slightly declining. Mind you, the constant flow of Bing commercials seems to have trailed off, and Yahoo is now going some hefty advertising itself with its new (and confusing) $100 million campaign.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

I can't imagine the stagnation is due to its usability. Pumping more marketing dollars behind it would certainly help to some degree. But what will it take for Bing to really make a dent in Google's market share? They essentially do the same thing, and they each have quite simple interfaces, unlike Yahoo. Even Yahoo's "compact view" is complicated.

BingGoogleYahoo