September 18th, 2007
Google launches presentations, but shouldn't have
Along with its new name (Google Docs & Spreadsheets is now just Google Docs), users are now free to upload Powerpoint presentations or start a new presentation by starting from scratch. That said, I am wondering why Google released such an incomplete product? It’s basically useless for business users who want to make professional looking presentations. This is so far away from a Powerpoint killer that it’s embarrassing I thought it might have had a chance.
Where do I start? Well, first off, there is no support for exporting a document to Powerpoint or as .odp (the open document format for presentations). I guess this isn’t truly a complimentary service to other office suites anymore like they have repeated over and over. Uploading Powerpoint presentations is basically useless too — it butchered the one I tested with.
Most companies have their own Powerpoint template they use to make sure presentations all have the same look and feel. And with that said — don’t bother trying to use it. There is no way to create your own template or upload one that already exists. If you have images that make up your template, you can add them to each slide but they have to be less than 2MB otherwise you will be out of luck. Oh, by the way, your presentation can’t exceed 10MB either.
How about those awful transitions and sounds that your boss likes to use? Well, you will be glad to know that Google Docs doesn’t support transitions or sound at all. There will be no more bouncing text, no fading images, and no screeching sliding text if your company decides to use Google Presentations. In fact, that might actually be a selling feature?
Oh, and bulleted points are sometimes nice to do one at a time — but you can’t do that either. You have to create a copy of the previous slide and add an extra point to emulate click events — who has time to do that?
It baffles me that they decided to launch this product without support for any of the most common features in most presentation software. What do you think? Will this tool useful for anybody?
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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