I haven't used a desktop document or spreadsheet in years. The argument that a couple of missing features, or ones that are somewhat sluggish over a bad network connection, will prevent widespread adoption of cloud-based products is completely ignoring the huge benefits of cloud-based systems.
In short: Calling Google docs a "non-starter" seems like a difficult position to defend. It's already in use by millions of people, daily, and growth is high. There are plenty of folks, including businesses, who have opted not to install MS Office and instead use Docs for everything. Sure, there are plenty of situations where that doesn't work, but as the "web as a platform" advances, and as office products on the web advance, the reasons for sticking with installed apps will continue to decline.
There will continue to be need for installed applications for heavy users for a long time to come (nobody is suggesting serious video or audio editing online, yet, but image editing is already reasonably do-able). Text-based and number-based documents? Those are easy. The very first personal computers could do them pretty well (Visicalc and WordStar, among others), and the web as a platform is vastly more powerful than the Apple II, C64, or IBM PC, that ran those products. And, they're also very easy to work on over very slow connections; you download the whole doc and check in changes in the background. Effectively making all the work happen on the client-side. No big deal.
It's a non starter in many use cases. There's no support for ODBC so you can't connect your spreadsheet to the internal BI servers, conditional formatting is really weak in Google sheets (no data bars, etc.), you can't have spreadsheets that refer to other spreadsheets, docs has awful formatting options, etc.
It's just the same thing as comparing nano to emacs/vim. Sure, they both superficially edit text, but that's where the comparison ends.
OK, so it's not competitive for some use cases today. Nothing prevents implementation of any of those features, or an evolution away from needing those specific features and replacing them with other features. You mention ODBC, which is a cool feature for some folks, but desktop spreadsheets can't readily hook up to a form on the web, which Google docs can. There are powerful new functionalities provided by web-based apps, and in many cases, those new functionalities trump the old ones.
To argue that what is true today will remain true effectively forever is to ignore the entire history of computing. Desktop applications won't win in the end. Every time a credible web-based alternative has arisen, it has won and destroyed the old way of doing things. So much so that we forget old ways even existed. In a decade I'll be surprised if there is still a desktop version of Office even still in development. There will be web-based versions that work without Internet access, but there won't be a version you "install" on your client machine. I'd bet it'll be sooner for most people, but there will remain outliers for several years beyond which there is a good business case for sticking with Office installed on each users machine.
Nothing prevents implementation of any of those features, other than the fact that browser platforms don't allow some basic features to work.
Copy paste? No, not without Flash. Calendar notifications that work when the browser is closed? Custom fonts? Vertical text? Software that doesn't rot? Accurate page layouts?
If these new functionalities were so good and browser integrations were so powerful, then phones wouldn't need app stores, GMail/Google Docs wouldn't have a mobile application, etc. I'm more than ready to bet that in a decade, there will still be a desktop version of Office.
What? Of course copy paste works, even with formatting. Or, at least it does on my machine. Spreadsheets are trickier, but there are ways to override the context menu to make it do-able. I assume Google docs can already do it. Haven't tried it specifically, but I don't remember not being able to...so pretty sure I have copied and pasted within a docs spreadsheet.
"Calendar notifications that work when the browser is closed?"
Why would your browser be closed? This is the future we're talking about. Your desktop and everything else will be in your browser. That's like complaining that notifications don't work when your computer is unplugged.
"Custom fonts? Vertical text?"
Already possible and covered by standards. Are you using IE10, or something?
"Software that doesn't rot?"
Hahahah. Funny. How's Visual Basic written ten years ago holding up on Win 10? Sure, it probably runs, but nobody wants to use it. Platforms evolve. Standards compliant HTML and JavaScript written ten years ago is still functional. What do you believe is uniquely prone to "rot" about the web platform?
All of the app stores have hundreds of apps built on web technologies. Google has a mobile version, but does not have a desktop version. In fact, GMail (and moreso, Inbox) are much better evidence for the case I'm making (that the web will devour almost every class of software in a decade) than the case you're making (that office software like Word and Excel are uniquely immune to being devoured). Inbox is a better mail client than Outlook. And Docs will become a better doc suite than Office...or somebody else will build one that is (might even be Microsoft that builds it...if they're smart, it will be).
> Sure, there are plenty of situations where that doesn't work, but as the "web as a platform" advances, and as office products on the web advance, the reasons for sticking with installed apps will continue to decline.
This is true, but it doesn't have to be one or the other. Office 365 lets you have full-strength desktop programs as well as web apps and smartphone apps, at one low price.
This may be why Office 365 seems to be growing faster than Google Docs, and why it has overtaken it, according to one survey. (1)
Of course, there are other considerations. First, most real businesses need something much more powerful than today's web apps. Second, Microsoft Office is a programmable platform with a huge range of third-party add-ons. Third, a lot of big companies have two decades of Office programming and Office documents. Even if they really want to move everything to the cloud, they're going to run hybrid and in-house cloud systems for a long time....
In short: Calling Google docs a "non-starter" seems like a difficult position to defend. It's already in use by millions of people, daily, and growth is high. There are plenty of folks, including businesses, who have opted not to install MS Office and instead use Docs for everything. Sure, there are plenty of situations where that doesn't work, but as the "web as a platform" advances, and as office products on the web advance, the reasons for sticking with installed apps will continue to decline.
There will continue to be need for installed applications for heavy users for a long time to come (nobody is suggesting serious video or audio editing online, yet, but image editing is already reasonably do-able). Text-based and number-based documents? Those are easy. The very first personal computers could do them pretty well (Visicalc and WordStar, among others), and the web as a platform is vastly more powerful than the Apple II, C64, or IBM PC, that ran those products. And, they're also very easy to work on over very slow connections; you download the whole doc and check in changes in the background. Effectively making all the work happen on the client-side. No big deal.