Google brings shared folders to Google Docs

This week Google introduced a new feature that could take Google Docs to an entirely new level, and one that has to give Microsoft pause. Google announced on their blog this week that they now support shared folders. This is a very big deal because it enables a group of people to not only share a single document as you could before, but to have a folder with multiple document types such as word processing, spreadsheets and so forth.

Regular readers may recall some research we cited in a post last March that SharePoint remains a file share for almost half of the people who responded. That means that most people aren't taking advantage of the host of other services that SharePoint offers. By introducing folder sharing, Google has a chance to poach one of the most popular reasons people use SharePoint.

In addition, the new service that lets you upload multiple files at the same time to a folder also gives you the type of service you get from Dropbox now. But as this week's cloud snafus from Microsoft and Apple have shown (as I wrote in "A Black Eye for Cloud Computing" on DaniWeb), you have to be careful when sharing documents online. SharePoint has the advantage (for the most part, there is a cloud version) of being stored on company servers.

But for small businesses looking for a "poor-man's" way to implement file sharing, a service like the shared folders feature on Google could provide an easy way to get started. It's also possible to use it as an online backup of files. Should be interesting to see how much free space they are willing to part with before they make you sign up for an enterprise package, but for now, it's a great new feature and it's well worth checking out.

For more information:
- see the Google Blog post

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