Google Should Support ODF

Google Should Support ODF
Stephen Leibowitz

I posted the following comment August 25, 2014 on the Official Google Enterprise Blog:

“we’re delivering on our promise to make it possible for you to work with any file …” Yet you do not support the Open Document Format. One of your links leads to this page.

The details show support for both old (.doc, .xls, and .ppt) and new (.docx, .xlsx, and .pptx) Microsoft Office formats. Microsoft’s new formats, collectively known as OOXML, have been criticized many times. See here for an example.

Your details page has no mention of ODF. Even Microsoft supports ODF in recent versions of Office, although its support is less than the support it gives to its own formats. Other software packages support ODF, including LibreOffice, OpenOffice, and Calligra. The UK government has recently mandated for its documents a move away from the Microsoft formats. It has embraced ODF. It is time for Google to strongly support the ODF format in its products.

Update:

Google has moved their blog and deleted the original comments, including mine.

Fortunately, they now support ODF. Files can be stored in an ODF format by clicking File > Download as. The user will then be shown a submenu of format options, which will depend on the document type. The ODF format options are:
OpenDocument Format – Word processing (.odt) and Spreadsheet (.ods)
ODP Document – Presentation (.odp)