Er, sorry for nitpicking, but Google Apps education edition is free: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/

Any school paying $50/seat/year for Premier edition is just stupid, unless they think 25 GB of mail is that much better than ~7 GB.

Google is behaving like a bank that offers information deposits rather than cash deposits, rather than paying you a percentage interest due to your deposit in the bank, Google pays you nothing. They get your content, your behaviors, for free. Until that changes, and until Google can offer a real Word Processor independent of its information depositing system, no we cannot use it. In fact, until we see more “Information Banks”, this is a serious breach of privacy and confidentiality of business information.

These people in business worked extremely hard to collect the information they assemble into documents, for Google to get these for free is absolutely criminal. Some of our documents span contributions from 30+ people, at around 30-120 dollars an hour. Those documents are EXPENSIVE pieces of intellectual property no matter how small. Even simple documents which take one member of staff two hours to generate, theoretically cost upwards of 60+ dollars for the employee to make. What do I get from Google? What do I get from Microsoft?

Microsoft Word has been an extremely powerful tool for people that take the time to learn it. Our businesses, when trained on a few key features can assemble and modify documents rapidly on Windows File Shares within the corporate environment. Our servers already index the documents for search.

The immature media needs to wake up, Information Banks like Google are now doing what Depository Banks did back in the day. The users need to fight for their intellectual property and claim a stake on any proceeds the bank makes on their IP.

The online version of Word might not be exactly like the Office version: it could be feature-incomplete, or have a UI different enough to add training costs. It might be optimized for IE and not work the same on modern browsers.

But the big issue is that a person would have to be nuts to trust MSFT with any kind of mission-critical data on-line. Windows is the most hackable legacy OS on the planet.

MSWord requires a lot of training already. It’s easy enough to type a business letter, but try to do something a little complex– columns; turning off “helpful” MSFT “features”– and you’re on thin ice.

“Moreover, there are very good free and open source alternatives to Word that exist today–not at some nebulous date next year. Yet, Office still remains dominant,”

1. Businesses move slowly and are ALWAYs 10-20 years behind the times, tech wise. Heck, they’re still using Windows, right?
2. I use NeoOffice. Clunky, but free and full-featured.
3. Having stuff “in the cloud” does have key advantages for very mobile people. Though it makes me nervous, too.
4. People like Google. AND people like free. That will speed adoption.