Well, I tried out Google Docs and I found it to be pretty cool that I can access a word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation program anywhere, anytime, when I've got an Internet connection. I don't personally have a whole lot of need for such a thing but I can see the many uses including library customers. Here in Howard County we now have OpenOffice on all our PACs, but in the old days you had to sign up for a time slot on one of the computers that had a word processor on it if you needed to type a paper or something. Web-based software is making this more and more obsolete. Google Docs and such services are also good for shared files, moving shared drives and folders and things toward obsolescence as well.
Web-based software is all well and good, but what happens if your Internet is down and you can't get to the web? With a regular application such as OpenOffice or MS Office, you can continue to work, but if your office depends on something like GoogleDocs, you're up the creek till the net is fixed, but I don't see many institutions wholly dependent on such things, at least not yet.
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