With Google Drive, you can keep all your important files in one place, then open them with your choice of apps and devices. Building on this open approach, we recently made it possible to launch your favorite desktop applications directly from Google Drive. And today we’re taking it a step further by bringing Google Drive to Microsoft Office. Using the new Google Drive plug-in, people using Office for Windows can now open their Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents stored in Drive, then save any changes back to Drive once they’re done.
There’s an interesting bit of speculation making the rounds about recent activity between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft is, step by step, selling off or shutting down all parts of the company that directly compete with Google – ads, maps, and even Windows Phone seems to be contested right now – which may mean nothing, or, it may mean closer cooperation between the two companies is afoot. Bing is interesting exception, but even that may be sold off in some way sooner rather than later (although Microsoft will most likely retain at least several crucial parts of it for Cortana).
Don’t be surprised when you see more Microsoft-oriented software from Google in the near future.
Can’t I already do this by pointing Office apps at the Google Drive folder which is syncing?
Sure. If you are on a computer with the GDrive client installed and configured.
This plugin is geared more toward computers where you don’t have that setup, and where you just want to access the files directly from the Internet, without saving them locally.
Basically, you can turn a Windows laptop into a Chromebook (no local storage for personal stuff).
But if it’s a plugin, won’t I have to install it anyway? If I don’t have permission to install the Drive client I’m not going to have permission to install this either. And if I’m on my own machines… well, I already have Drive installed.
But that requires you to have the Drive folder synced to a local filesystem. This is more like a network filesystem, in that it teaches Office how to read and write directly to Drive, in much the same way that it does with Microsoft’s own Sharepoint.
Still don’t see how you need anything special for that.
Office runs on Windows and Mac, Windows, Mac and Google Drive all support WebDAV*
So why ?
* correct me if I’m wrong
I don’t know, but even if you’re right, there’s a big usability difference between having to setup access to a WebDAV site via URLs, and having a plugin that hides the details. It’s easy enough for technical folk to do the former, but not so much for random home/business users.
Really ? Sure a lot of people don’t even know how to download and install software.
These are the steps to map WebDAV as a network drive:
http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Setting+Up+WebDAV+in+Window…
Are those steps harder than the ones for WebDAV ? I don’t know.
Then again, some people don’t even understand copy/paste properly.
Ever take chemistry? Then you’d know about activation energy. The energy required for a reaction to occur. The difficulty in setting up software is kind of like that. This lowers that activation energy, allowing word to google drive to occur in situations where there is less “energy” involved.
I don’t think Google Drive does, at least not officially. There are some 3rd-party servers you can run it through, though I’m not sure how much I’d rely on them for anything critical. People have been asking about webdav support in Google Drive for at least three years now, according to Google’s own product forum.
From my research, I think the only one of the well-known cloud providers to officially support webdav as a method of connection is box.net. Truth be told, that might make box.net worth looking into for me, because there are a lot of situations where this sync folder concept just doesn’t cut it.
Edited 2015-07-22 09:46 UTC
Ahh, OK. Good to know they aren’t using WebDAV.
Windows use to support WebDAV; however, Microsoft has been removing support as of late from parts of their portfolio, I believe they are calling it a deprecated protocol. Not sure if it still provides a driver or not.
FWIW, I use to use WebDAV drive mapping for a manager to be able to get docs out of Subversion. Worked really well.
Well, that would be an interesting move because their Sharepoint product supports the use of WebDAV with their own Office products.
So I guess they want to move companies to using their Web-based Office solutions ?
Yes, they are starting to advocate using Office365 over the installed version of Office. They’d much rather you pay a subscription than a one-time fee – better revenue stream (theoretically).
I believe they have an ‘on-promise’ solution for that too. I believe it’s called: Office Web Apps Server.
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