Google Docs cooperation

Next week I am starting to write a book with a colleague in the Netherlands. The prospect of e-mailing numerous drafts back and forth isn't really appealing. Corrections and amendments will have to be made. This is difficult enough even if you can sit physically together over a couple of beers, let alone thousands of kilometers apart.

Enter Google Docs. During the past weekend I experimented a bit with the web-based software. It looks promising. Two or more people can work together on a document and changes will be immediately reflected. It's still a bit new, so there certainly will be a learning curve. The use of any new software program needs some practice. But Google Docs looks good. You don't even have to make those back-ups because the document resides on Google's servers.

If in the future more applications become web-based, this will be the end of software as we know it. Who will want to spend hundreds of euros for Microsoft Office? Even the free OpenOffice may become obsolete. Word processors of course do have more bells and whistles that Google Docs lacks. Then again, if you even can write a book in Google Docs, what more do you need? But as Mao used to say, if you want to know how a pear tastes, you have to take a bite.