A lot has been happening in the software world in recent weeks. After years of waiting, Microsoft released Office for iPad and at the same time released Office Mobile for free for everyone. Well, it seems that Google also wants to cut a piece of the pie, so yesterday it released free apps Docs and Sheets for mobiles and tablets, creating real competition for Word and Excel. Until now, applications were built directly into Google Drive, which made them practically invisible. But the release of separate applications means that Google has made its suite visible on both platforms – on Androidand also on iOS.
Alongside Docs and Sheets, however, Google is preparing a third application, Google Slides. The app should appear soon on both platforms and will support mobiles and tablets, while Microsoft's PowerPoint can only be used on iPad tablets. However, PowerPoint and Office for iPad provide significantly more functions, which makes a larger display more of a necessity. The set from Google will probably focus only on basic functions and leave the rest to the desktop version, as it has taken a similar step with the Docs and Sheets applications, which compete with Office Mobile rather than Office on the iPad.
On the other hand, Office for iPad requires a subscription to Office 365, which costs €69 per year in the Personal edition and €99 per year in the Home edition. But Docs, Sheets and Slides will be available for free. In all three applications, documents will be stored in the cloud, but if an Internet connection is not available, then the files will be temporarily stored in offline storage. The company will also end support for editing documents in the Google Drive application, which will require users to download the Docs and Sheets applications.
