Zoho has just added a feature to Zoho Writer that while may not seem like anything big, will be really helpful to a select group of people. What they've done is added the option for users to import documents from Google Docs to Zoho Writer. The group of people who this will be really helpful to is those who started using Google Documents at one point or another but now use Zoho.

Zoho took a pretty big leap today, and it will likely pay off in big ways for them. What they decided to do is leverage Google and Yahoo's rapidly growing user base to help attract new users. How so? Instead of having to create a Zoho account new (and existing) users can simply login using their Google or Yahoo credentials.

Back in September, we wrote about "The Ultimate Steal" from Microsoft because they were offering students the option to purchase Office Ultimate 2007 for just $59 bucks. Considering it retails for $680, this deal is a 91% discount. At the time they said the offer would end on April 30th, but as it turns out, they extended the offer a few days and now its set to end on May 16th, a week from today.

One of the things that I've felt online spreadsheets have really lacked is support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). I use VBA macros quite frequently in my spreadsheets as a way to analyze and process data that can't be done with formulas. Well, Zoho has decided to step up to the plate in a big way.

While Google's Presentations application has been nice, it has been missing one important feature.  That feature is the option to save presentations in the PowerPoint format (PPT). Today that changes because Google now supports PPT files. This means that users will be able to open the presentations that they create with Google, in Microsoft's PowerPoint.

Last November, Zoho announced that they were adding offline editing support to Zoho Writer using Google Gears. We mentioned how ironic it was that Zoho was using Google's service (Google Gears) to make the offline editing support available, yet Google still wasn't offering any type of offline editing or synchronization option for Google Docs.

Zoho's suite of online applications continues to get bigger and bigger. Just this morning they launched yet another application called Zoho Invoice to join a whole slew of other business applications like Zoho Meeting, Zoho Projects and more.

This morning, popular web-based Zoho Writer (just one of many applications in the Zoho Office Suite) received a pretty major update. To refresh your memory, Zoho Writer is a full-featured online word processor. One of its best features is simply the fact that they offer real-time collaboration so that multiple users can be editing one document.

Last Friday Ryan gave a CyberNet Award for the most powerful website to Zoho and mentioned how they offer 18 different powerful products and services that made them deserving of this award. In the comments, Pieter said that Zoho was a little too ugly in his opinion, which I tended to agree with.

Back in May, Zoho Writer decided to put Google Gears to good use by launching partial offline support. I say partial because at the time, it did have some limitations. The biggest limitation was the fact that downloaded documents were available in read-only mode which meant editing capabilities weren't an option.

Zoho has expanded its web service offering once again by introducing the new Zoho DB, which is a complete database and report management tool. It has a familiar spreadsheet interface that users will quickly be able to adapt to, and the chart creator is unbelievably simple.

It was only going to be a matter of time before Microsoft took a step towards bringing their Office Suite online, and yesterday they made that first step by announcing Microsoft Office Live Workspace. It's described as the online companion to Microsoft Office and for now, only pre-registration is available.

The list of companies offering an online word processor just keeps getting longer and longer. And because there are so many options, it makes it difficult to determine which service to use, if any at all. As though there weren't enough options, Adobe has announced that they are acquiring Virtual Ubiquity which is the company that makes Buzzword.

All along I had been wondering why Yahoo hadn't acquired Zoho (Online Office Suite) yet. In fact, back in July I asked this very question and I suggested that Yahoo seemed like a likely buyer because Microsoft has no need for them, and Google has their own Office Suite. Now I know that Yahoo had no need for Zoho - they were going after Zimbra, an Online Open Source Office Suite.

Zoho has been busy launching application after application, giving users a near complete web-based office suite that’s really quite impressive. Today they announced a new addition to Zoho, however this time, it’s not a new application. Instead, they’re taking the opportunity to bring some of their services together by launching an integrated start page.

Earlier today Zoho launched a few new features. The first, and most notable item is support for Google Gears. You may remember the open source Google Gears project from when we discussed it back in May, which is when Google launched it with support for Google Reader. One-week later Remember the Milk launched their own offline support using Google Gears.

Google has taken yet another stab at Microsoft in hopes of luring users away from Microsoft Office. Now Google is offering StarOffice 8, which normally costs $79, as an optional download in the free Google Pack.

I always love the “Best Website” lists because there’s usually a handful of sites that I haven’t heard of, or paid much attention to. Time magazine has put together their list of the 50 Best Websites of 2007. They explain it as their picks of “what’s new and exciting about the Web right now.”

I’m surprised that Yahoo hasn’t acquired Zoho yet.

ReadWriteWeb has put together a quick comparison of five different online office suites to see how they stack up to each other, and so I thought that I would give my take on Zoho vs. Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Google and Zoho have both been leaders in the online office suite arena, and each are great for different reasons.