Is Google adding to its office suite?

Google may claim it's all about search, but the company is creeping ever closer to offering a full office suite. It's already released word processing and spreadsheet programs, and now it may be working on a Powerpoint competitor.

According to several blog postings the company is working on an online presentation software program, dubbed "Presently." A few bloggers were able to grab some files from a Google site, and based on the documents, the new program would be able to able to convert a document into a presentation, create slides and view the presentation in full-screen.

So far, Google denies that it's targeting Microsoft's Office desktop application suite, which currently dominates the productivity software market. Regardless, bloggers speculated that it may wind up as a competitor at some point.

Blog community response:

"There is a lot of enthusiasm for Web-based services but it's difficult to see many people, particularly corporate-types, abandoning Office any time soon for Google. Why should Google Office be anything different as a competitive threat as WordPerfect or Open Office, which are, in theory, easier products for many people to embrace? (One different Google Office does have over WordPerfect and Open Office: it's free.)"
--Mark Evans

"The upshot? While critics will be quick to point out that none of these apps are the feature equivalent (or even the 20% equivalent) of the Microsoft counterpart, I frankly don't care. For my entirely self-serving purposes when I have to do a quick doc, run a spreadsheet, more often than not I use the available Google tool. And, as I have mentioned here many times, I live in Gmail for email (so up the damn quote already!)."
--Infectious Greed

"I imagine there are some applications for this, however I do wonder if people would (or should) actually use this during actual presentations. Would be a shame if all of a sudden some Google error appeared, wouldn't it?"
--ZefHemel.com