Will Google Replace MS Outlook?

OK…first I have to say that I’ve written this blog 2 times and when I went to save it, it disappeared into cyber space somewhere!!!  Even though we are observing that many people are moving to online tools to do their work (like Google docs & calendar)…it is very frustrating for me to get online and lose work I’ve spent hours putting together.  Just had a lightening strike here too…so, I’ve unplugged my computer hoping my hard drive doesn’t get fried. 

Rebecca, who is 23, has never used Outlook to get her emails, plan her calendar or organize her contacts.  She has almost always relied on her gmail account to do all this.  And, as Google has added tools, Becky and others in her generation have just continued to build their relationship with Google.  We have even observed 30 somethings who have straddled the world of Google and MS Outlook…and some of them are abandoning Outlook in favor of the highly mobile Google tools.

So, back to where I started…I’ve been giving this whole trend toward online tools a shot…and I’ve been surprised to find great tools out there, but that they often don’t work when you hit the ‘save’ button.  At least when you lose a document that is stored on your computer, you only have yourself to blame for losing it.  But, when you are working on a document online and you lose it, you are left to wonder “where the heck did it go?”

So, this is the third time I’ve written this…and I used MS Word first…to keep it in physical form.  Now I will try to load it up on WordPress in cyberspace and see if it goes…and if it doesn’t, I always have my hard doc to rely on.  I guess I’m still old school…I’m not willing just to accept that it’s gone…whereas Becky would have said “the server is just too busy…too many people on it” and she would have just waited to type it all again.  I wonder what will happen to these younger people when they have real deadlines and bosses who don’t want to wait for the server?

Here’s Becky’s movie about this trend…will Google replace MS Outlook?