Google Docs easily tops online rivals in visitors

Statistics show a manifold increase in traffic for Google’s apps suite during November.

Google Inc.’s Google Docs software has cemented its position as the leading suite of online office applications, based on unique-visitor statistics released Thursday by a Web-audience research firm showing Google holding a commanding lead over start-up rivals as well as Microsoft Corp.

The Web site for the free, still-in-beta Google Docs suite snared more than 1.4 million unique visitors in October, seven times more than it did in the same month last year, according to Boston-based Compete Inc.

Becky Bitzenhofer, a Compete analyst, wrote in a blog posting, that a “user interface overhaul and subsequent intense marketing in June seems to have ignited traffic” to the Google Docs site.

Bitzenhofer also attributed some of Google’s gains to Microsoft’s release of Office 2007 earlier this year. The new version of Microsoft’s market-leading desktop suite includes “a whole new interface that is unfamiliar, and potentially frustrating, to the veteran Office user,” she wrote.

Google Docs includes a Word-style document editor and an Excel-like spreadsheet application. Both store documents online, enabling multiple users to edit them at the same time, though not collaboratively with the same real-time view. Bitzenhofer wrote in her posting that she counted users as unique visitors if they simply viewed a document or spreadsheet, thus not requiring that they actually create or edit one.

Google announced a PowerPoint-like application called Presentation last spring and made it available as part of Google Docs in September. But Bitzenhofer didn’t include Presentation in her count of visitors to the Google Docs site.

Compete later released a broader set of statistics to the Web 2.0 news site Read/Write Web comparing the Google Docs visitor count with those of Microsoft’s Office Live service as well as online rivals such as ThinkFree Inc., Zoho Inc. and Zimbra Inc., which now is owned by Yahoo Inc. Those numbers showed Google with a huge lead, commanding nearly 10 times the traffic of Office Live, its closest rival.

Although the usage of Google Docs has grown relatively quickly, the technology in all likelihood has made little dent in the customer base of Office, which Microsoft claims is used by more than 500 million end users worldwide.

Microsoft has yet to release any statistics on the number of copies of Office 2007 it has sold thus far. But financially, the new Office suite has been a huge boon to the software vendor.

The Office Live service that Microsoft is using to combat Google Docs and other online suites includes a beta product called Office Live Workspace, which complements but doesn’t replace Office, as well as a set of applications designed for small businesses. There also has been speculation that Microsoft may convert its low-end Works software suite into an online, ad-supported service.

Office 2007 Service Pack 1

Microsoft has released Office 2007 Service Pack 1. The download link is broken as I write this, but it shall be fixed soon. Here’s what’s new:

” The 2007 Microsoft Office system Service Pack 1 (SP1) reflects unceasing efforts at Microsoft to address customer concerns. Nearly all of the improvements included in the 2007 Office system SP1 are in response to direct feedback from power users at large organizations or indirect feedback from home and office users through the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system. By tapping these extensive customer-feedback channels, Microsoft targeted the issues that customers care about most. As a result, the 2007 Office system SP1 delivers significant stability and performance improvements to the applications that home and office workers rely on every day.

By deploying the 2007 Office system SP1, home users and businesses can quickly reap benefits in the following areas:

Stability. Using data from the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system, Microsoft fixed, at minimum, the five software bugs that most frequently caused each application in the 2007 Office system to crash. The 2007 Office system SP1 also improves the stability of server components in the 2007 Office system and compatibility with Windows Server 2008, so companies can more confidently move forward with upgrade plans.

Performance. The 2007 Office system SP1 improves performance in applications that are pervasive in modern offices, most notably: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Security. By incorporating incremental advances in security and results from application testing, the 2007 Office system SP1 offers home and office users better protection against malicious software and potential threats to privacy. “