So I’m shuffling through the Sunday Times, and come across this article. I feel like I’m in a time warp from the last internet bubble, with people talking about dumb Internet terminals with all apps being drawn from “cloud computing”.

Um, so the point of the article is that Google Docs is so rad, that it is an enormous threat to Microsoft and its more than 90% market share in productivity apps such as Microsoft Office. I have Microsoft Office on my PowerMac, and via Parallels on Windows XP. I have used Google Docs in the past. Maybe I’m missing something… so the article would have me use a slower version of Office 97, vs. the faster Office 2003 I’m using now? Why should I switch?

I mean, maybe I’m not the target market here… maybe, as the article suggests, the target market is the person buying a new machine. I guess that person doesn’t have his/her Office media from the previous machine… and therefore they aren’t one of the 500 million people who do.

I’m an engineer by trade, so I generally don’t change the tools I’m using unless the new tool is better. Google Docs definitely does not qualify. Perhaps, as CEO Eric Schmidt suggests, eventually it will. OK then, I’ll reconsider Google Docs once it has at least some of the hundreds of features you would have me give up for the pleasure of using it.

For all of the pompous posture in the article, which basically makes Google out to be the innovators in rapid application development (huh?), I really hope their search engine stays relevant. That’s the application they’ve made that is competitive in the market segment, so that’s the only Google product I use on a regular basis.

(Disclaimer: I once applied to work for Google, interviewed, and was treated poorly by their HR group. I was not offered a job. I was subsequently contacted 3 separate times to start the HR process again, and I respectfully turned them down as they did not give me any level of confidence that their HR practices had improved).