Forget Office, People use Google Apps Now

A couple of years ago, I got a Chromebook for my birthday. My Dad told me they were ridiculous and a waste of money, arguing that there was no point in buying a computer that can't even run Microsoft Office.

I didn't see the inability to run such programs on my Chromebook as a problem. I wanted one because I believed (and still do believe) that they're the best notebooks for accessing the web quickly, free of hassle. At my age, (16) to be able to efficiently access social media applications, and entertainment services such as Netflix and YouTube is of greatest importance. I saw Google Apps and their parallel cloud services as a perfectly adequate way of doing my school work.

My Dad dismissed Google docs as stupid, and thought I was stupid for using them. However the more I used them, and the more I used the Google Drive, the more I preferred it them to Office. Google Apps offer flexibility: I can start a piece of work at home, and then finish it and print it at school. I decided cloud services is where it is at. It just made sense to me.

Nowadays, people want technology to be as simple and as efficient as possible. Cloud services can fulfil these requirements brilliantly. Take Google Docs for example, you can access your documents on your laptop, tablet, smartphone, and on any other computer you may find yourself on harmoniously, without the requirement of any hardware such as a USB stick. The harmony between different devices is very appealing; its simplistic, but extremely beneficial. People don't mind that Google docs might not be as advanced as Office. The fact that its essentially office stripped to the bare necessities, doesn't matter. The advantages of the cloud features is considerably greater than the disadvantages.

I have always felt that young people such as myself are the people that really know what's going on with technology.  We are the primary consumers, and we're the innovators. We seem to understand what will take off, and what will flop. Over the past year or so I've seen a massive increase in the number of people abandoning the traditional; Microsoft Office, for Google's cloud alternative. What really matters nowadays is connectivity, and simplicity, because it's these two things that ultimately effect productivity. Google Docs ticks both these boxes, as it's user friendly and simple, as well as being well connected via the Drive.

When I first told my Dad that Google's office and cloud services was the way forward, he laughed. However, yesterday he informed me that the company he works for, Trimble Navigations (listed on NASDAQ, and made revenue of over $2 Billion in 2012) had signed a corporate deal with Google for the business use of these services.


Lessons learnt? Parents should listen to their kids when it comes to technology, and forget Office, it sucks.