I can remember a while back seeing some very interesting "word processor" offerings from Google and Adobe that were very visually appealing, but they didn't hit my radar, admittedly because I've always thought of Microsoft as the category killer for productivity software.  Up until now, I've not really allowed myself to consider these other product offerings.  I guess that is what is termed "brand loyalty". 

 

So now why all of the sudden have I taken an interest in some of these competing products?  Well I think the answer is, they are starting to become compelling for the first time.  I've never really been a fan of Writely (Google's word processor), but when they filled out the suite with a spreadsheet and a presentation application, all of the sudden it becomes interesting.  I think it becomes particularly interesting for small start-ups who would normally have to shell out a couple of thousand bucks for the "office essentials". 

 

I also believe that Apple has set some new standards and expectations as to how software is supposed to look.  While they've never been able to capture a market with their productivity offerings, some of their other applications have really taken hold (mainly thinking of the iPhone user experience).

 

When I first looked at Adobe's BuzzWord, I wasn't that impressed.  But recently I took the time to use it for real world applications.  I'm starting to like it.  If they'd fill out their suite of productivity tools, I think we might have a new category killer.

 

While I realize that most corporations will not consider online applications due to the fear of leaks of their proprietary intellectual property, there are perhaps a large number of companies that don't have those reservations, especially considering the inherent benefits of the online model.  True (real time) collaboration is quite possibly the feature that will propel these tools to the forefront.   I've never really been a fan of Microsoft's sequential (work-flow) collaboration.  While it's important in a lot of scenarios, I don't consider that "collaboration", but rather workflow.