Last week, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced that it was moving its Google Cloud Connect product out of Beta. Cloud Connect, a free plug-in, lets Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Office users who are tethered to the desktop have access to the cloud for collaboration and back-up purposes. It's very powerful because it gives Google access to Microsoft Office users, and Office remains the dominant business office productivity suite.

The beauty of this product is that it lets workers share Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents within the Google Cloud, but without leaving the Office interface, giving Office users the best of both worlds--the comfort of a product they know combined with the power of the cloud to collaborate and share files easily.

According to Google, it assigns each document a unique URL and provides access to simultaneous collaboration, revision history, cloud syncs and simple sharing from within Google Docs.

Documents remain as Office documents in Office formats, rather than being converted to Google Docs where they can lose advanced formatting and features like track changes and commenting.

Cloud Connect is the product Google created when they bought Doc Verse last year.

Microsoft has also introduced a cloud-based version of Office, and a recent blog post on the Microsoft Office blog suggests that Microsoft may consider products like this one to be a threat. The blog post stated that Google Docs added a layer of complexity to the Office document editing process, while rehashing many of the typical anti-cloud arguments about security and stability.

Google Cloud Connect  works with Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 running under Windows XP, Vista or 7. It is available immediately. There is currently no Mac version and Google has indicated that lack of an open API could prevent them from developing a similar product for the Mac version of Office.

For more information:
-see the official announcement on the Google Blog

Related Articles:
Google brings MS Office Docs to Google Cloud Connect 
Google Cloud Connect brings Google Enterprise Search to the cloud
Google Docs spreadsheet chart editor gets face lift