Google: Expect significant improvements to Docs suite within a year

We can expect to see dramatic improvements in Google's hosted office productivity applications such as Google Docs "within a year." The president of Google's Enterprise unit, Dave Girouard offered this reassurance even as he acknowledged that the Docs suite has some way to go before it can match the capabilities of Microsoft Office or open-sourced OpenOffice, reports Computerworld. Intense development must be going on behind the scenes though, because Girouard went on to assure current users that, "In a year, those products will be night and day from what they are today."

In the meantime, Google will continue to enhance Gmail and Google Calendar, which are also based on its App Engine, hosted application development environment. The paid version of these offerings, Apps Premier, currently cost US$50 per user, per year. According to Girouard, the Google Enterprise unit generates "a few hundred million dollars" in revenue and is profitable.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld

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