Tech Center Current

Google Docs is a free suite of online document collaboration tools, sort of like a simpler version of Microsoft Office with more focus on group editing and sharing. It previously offered text document and spreadsheet tools. Yesterday, Google added a new tool to the bunch: presentations.

Google’s presentation tool attempts to serve the same purpose as Microsoft Powerpoint, but in a more portable form. Presentations can be conducted over the Internet, and the participants can communicate with each other through a chat box on the presentation page. As with the other Google Docs tools, the presentation tool also allows you to set up collaborators so multiple people can help develop the presentation without having to deal with the mess of e-mailing the revisions to each other. Every revision is saved on Google’s servers, and you can easily go through the revision history to look at older versions.

The presentation tool is still new and currently falls short of Powerpoint’s feature set in several areas. For instance, animations and audio are not yet supported, and the styling capabilities in general are fairly limited. Although it allows you to import Powerpoint files, it tends to get some of the spacing and sizing slightly off. Google says that this is just an early version and there will be many improvements to come. Google has a history of releasing products early before they are considered “feature-complete” and then rolling in new features over time.

If you’re looking for a true free alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint, I would personally recommend the Impress tool from the free OpenOffice application suite. But the collaboration features offered by Google’s presentation tool are definitely unique, and it’s worth a look if you plan to develop or conduct your presentation over the Internet.

Here is a presentation I made, as viewed through Google’s presentation tool. I originally developed it in OpenOffice, exported it to Powerpoint, and then imported it into Google Docs.