In This Chapter

As you’ve no doubt surmised, Google is much more than a search engine. In fact, with all the end-user applications that Google has developed, Google appears to be a software developer, competing with the likes of Microsoft.

This is most apparent when you examine the office application space. Microsoft has owned this market for some time now, with its popular suite of Microsoft Office applications—Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and so on. But Google represents new competition for Microsoft, thanks to Google’s Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications, collectively dubbed Google Docs.

That’s right—Google competes directly with Microsoft Office. And the best thing is, Google’s applications are free!