Google's powerpoint competitor is expected to be released very soon, according to reports circulating. The Inquirer says the product will be called Presently. It wouldn't surprise me if Presently is unveiled at TechCrunch40 next week - TechCrunch was coy about this in their blog post, but they noted earlier this week that Google would be announcing something.
The lead-up to Presently: in June Google announced its acquisition of Zenter, a company that made software for creating online slide presentations. Zenter's technology was added to Tonic Systems, a technology for presentation creation and document conversion. Tonic Systems was acquired in April by Google. In a blog post in June, Google said that a presentations app was due by the end of summer. Well the end of summer is just a week away, so current speculation is almost certainly accurate.
]]> Will this finally close the loop on Google's nascent Web Office suite? The table below shows that presentations is the only major app currently missing from Google Apps. It still won't make Google Apps any more ready for the enterprise, as both Microsoft and Zimbra were at pains to point out this week. But with the CapGemini partnership intact, it inches Google another step towards a true Microsoft Office competitor.Web Office Suite: Core Products
| Calendar | Word processing | Spreadsheets | Presentation | ||
| Google Apps | Y, Gmail | Y, Google Calendar | Y, Google D & S | Y, Google D & S | Y (Zenter + Tonic) |
| Zoho | Y, Zoho Mail (private beta) | Y, Zoho Mail (private beta) | Y, Zoho Writer | Y, Zoho Sheet | Y, Zoho Show |
| ThinkFree | N | N | Y, ThinkFree Write | Y, ThinkFree Calc | Y, ThinkFree Show |
| Zimbra | Y | Y | Y | Y | N |
| Microsoft Office Live | Y | Y | N | N | N |
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