Google Drive now supports LibreOffice file formats
Google recently announced ODF support for its Google Drive cloud office productivity suite. ODF is the OpenDocument file format—an internationally-standardised format for office productivity documents. While many competing office software suites are compatible with ODF, LibreOffice is the leading product using ODF today.
Google's move is no doubt prompted by significant and growing adoption of ODF in large-scale organisations. In the case of the UK government, ODF has been mandated as the sole document interchange file format—excluding altogether both Microsoft Office and Google Drive's non-standard technology.
Opening an ODF file in Google Drive involves simply uploading and opening it in the relevant Google Drive application. Exporting existing files to ODF is also supported—in this example, a Google Docs document (for text content) is being exported to LibreOffice Writer format:
In terms of the well-documented risks to businesses presented by closed technology, Google Drive is arguably a worse proposition than even Microsoft Office. Microsoft's file formats are at least supported in zero-cost alternatives such as LibreOffice, and with ever-increasing conversion fidelity—often better than Microsoft's own products. Google Drive's native file format by comparison is entirely closed and secret to Google. Businesses consolidating on Google Drive have no choice of vendor or alternative product, and are left wide-open to all the associated drawbacks of vendor lock-in. We'll be blogging more on the importance of open standards for office productivity closer to Document Freedom Day.
For now, Google introducing ODF support is an invaluable feature for businesses wishing to take advantage of a cloud-based service in tandem with LibreOffice.
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