Google Docs Update Adds More Collaboration To Presentations

Google's sweeping updates to its Google Docs

The massive presentations update comes as Google continues to bulk up Docs, which in the past year and a half has roped in millions of new users and added more than 60 new features. Google's updates to Google Docs put it in a position to better compete with Microsoft and its Office 365 suite of cloud productivity software.

Google Software Engineer Steven Saviano said in a blog post that collaboration is the cornerstone of the new version of Google Docs presentations.

"Presentations are made to be shared -- whether it's presenting your thesis to your professors or inspiring colleagues at a conference," Saviano wrote. "And the best presentations are made together, collaborating with others to build a compelling story that captivates your audience."

The new collaboration capabilities in presentations let users see exactly what others are working on with colored presence markers; edit presentations while working simultaneously with others from different locations; use revision history to see who made changes and revert back to earlier versions; and start conversations and share new ideas using a built-in chat feature.

Along with new collaboration capabilities, Google also added more than 50 new features to presentations. Some of the updates include new transitions, which let users move between slides with fades or 3D effects; animations, to add emphasis; new themes for distinct visual styles; drawings that let users build new designs, layouts and flowcharts in presentations; and rich tables with merged cells and more options for presenting data.

According to Saviano, the new version of presentations will be rolled out gradually and users can start using the new version of presentations now by updating their document settings.

Google cautioned, however, that a lot of the new presentation features were built using technologies compatible with modern browsers and using an older browser will allow presentation viewing, but editing will be unavailable.

"With today's launch, the Google Docs suite is now built on a single, solid foundation," Saviano wrote. "Now that the groundwork is in place, you can expect more innovative and collaborative features, delivered faster than ever before."

Google and Microsoft have battled head-to-head in the cloud computing arena, and Google's updates to Google Docs and the addition of more collaboration capabilities to presentations is a direct swipe at Microsoft, which has claimed that Google's heart is not in cloud computing. In their contentious cloud computing kerfuffle, Google and Microsoft have battled each other over whose cloud plays have the most collaboration chops.

The cloud collaboration fight is just one of several cloud battles Google and Microsoft are fighting as the war for cloud computing dominance continues and both companies seek to add more customers to their cloud rosters.