We visited Google on Monday, and got a briefing on their latest Google Apps. Of course, the facility was beautiful, with a great cafeteria and environmentally-friendly cutlery. But it was empty. The Apps provided similar great promise, but at the moment are a bit lacking too.

On the location: nice part of Detroit; fun workstations; colour scheme strong on primary colours; and the expected great cafeteria. Kudos for the healthy food, and the plates and cutlery made from sugar cane and corn starch. Everything was compostable, and they tell me they do in fact compost it with the food.

Oddly, the building was empty. I gather they’re new in Detroit, and I’m not totally sure why they need such a big space anyhow for a sales office. Perhaps growth will make the place buzz, but it’s not obvious how.

The Apps themselves have made a bit of progress over the past year, when I last looked at them. Most notably:

• Google Sites, launched just Feb 27, is a decent start as a wiki. As the name suggests, the idea is for each page to look more like an html page than a mediawiki text page. Editing is very simple and intuitive, but there’s very basic formatting functionality (html, not any wiki markup).
• The most impressive feature is how easy it is to embed a Google Apps document in a wiki page. Just drag and drop (or insert URL), and the info appears as in the original document. For instance, you can stick a spreadsheet in. Anyone can edit the document just by double-clicking, and the content is automatically updated in real-time. For instance, if the embedded spreadsheet refers to a stock price (see below), then whenever anyone views the wiki page, the latest stock price will appear automatically, and will update real-time while you stay on the page.
• This *dynamic content linking* is the most interesting thing I saw at Google. It applies to all the Apps. You can even turn bits of App content into Widgets. For instance, here’s a quick rundown on the possible:
  - type “Pfizer” in a spreadsheet cell
  - in next cell, type a lookup for the stock symbol, from Google Finance; the spreadsheet automatically fills in PFE
  - in next cell, type a lookup for stock price of the symbol, and spreadsheet automaticaly fills in the current price; this updates automatically
• you can even create a gadget based on the price field, and that can appear anywhere, and it will update automatically.
• (I wish I could insert a sample spreadsheet here, but we don’t seem to have the spreadsheets enabled in this community.)
• By the way, we got a quick preview of an upcoming release of Google Docs, and it looks like a significant upgrade. Still not for power Word users, but at least closer.

It’s the dynamic linking that provides the opportunity to turn “shadow IT” inside-out. Normally, one of the big complaints about all the spreadsheets / Access DBs / etc. that proliferate in corporations is that they’re isolated, not dynamic (need to access user’s PC to get information), don’t link back into main systems, etc. But if the documents reside on a SaaS platform like Google’s, many of those complaints go away.

In fact, I could develop a sophisticated calculation / algorithm to process data from multiple sources within a Google Spreadsheet, then make the result available through a gadget to anyone else in the organization. Presto! My home-grown VAR system becomes the bank’s whole infrastructure for managing risk! (Just kidding.) But really, my personal work *can* become a critical component in an Enterprise activity, even some degree of automation.

Sadly, of course, it’s a bit early to declare victory in this direction. The Google Apps seem to crash often (e.g., when embedding a large PowerPoint in a Site page); the Sites editor is clunky, and goes wonky now and then; the slideshow loses all the graphics when it imports from PowerPoint; the spreadsheet can’t do any very sophisticated formulas; etc.

But the direction is clear. A platform, even something as simple as Google Apps, can provide a huge leap in flexibility and productivity just by making dynamic information available, and manageable, by regular users using familiar tools.