Last Tuesday's keynote at Google I/O 2014 -- the company's developers conference -- introduced a lot of changes coming to Android, Google Cloud, and, importantly, Google Drive. Now Google Drive and its suite of productivity apps are more powerful than ever, and worth downloading, especially for the price. It's free.

Essentially, Google is taking on Microsoft's Office 365 subscription-only, cloud-supported document-editing and collaboration suite with its Google Drive suite, which got an update the same day the changes were announced. Here are the improvements Google is bringing to its collection of apps for work.

Full Native Editing for Office Documents

Google bought mobile office emulator Quickoffice a couple years ago and used it in tandem with Google Drive to enable its users to edit Microsoft documents like Word on-the-go. Quickoffice was a great way for Android and iOS users to work on Microsoft documents, especially because it was free and available before Microsoft ever opened up Office 365 for iPhones and iPads.

But it's a little clunky, especially as an add-on to Google Drive. That's one of the reasons why Google decided to bake Quickoffice directly into Google Drive and Google Docs, allowing for native editing of Office documents right from your Drive account on mobile and on the web.

Editing .docx files, for example, is now very easy. You can open a Word document as an attachment to an email, for example, or from your Google Drive, and simply edit and save it -- without first converting it to a Google Doc file. Changes will save back into the original Word document, making it easy for everyone to work on a file, no matter whether they use Office of Drive.

Instant Collaboration

Google also added and refined features to make and track changes or comments between many users, collaboratively. Users in on the doc sharing can make suggested edits which are highlighted, and other users can accept or reject those changes with the press of a button. It'll also tell you who made the change, comment, or suggestion, making collaboration much easier.

Google Slides

One feature that Microsoft had for mobile that was sorely lacking from Google was a real native way to create and edit PowerPoint presentations. Google solved that problem on Tuesday by announcing Google Slides -- which can create, edit, and, importantly, save the document in Microsoft's .pptx format, for easier cross-device and user collaboration.

Speaking of collaboration, just like other new Google Drive apps, Slides allows sharing with anyone, and other users can edit, chat, and comment in real time in the same document. Changes to a Google Slides document are automatically saved, but if you can't be online, you can save the document and edit it on your mobile device offline as well.

Google Slides is also an interesting app to try out, just if you want to get a sneak preview of the new "Material Design" UI coming at the end of the year to "Android L" or whatever Google ends up naming the new mobile OS.

Google Drive for Work

Something that won't matter for individuals -- but is a great option for small businesses -- is the new Google Drive for Work. It's a premium app for businesses that are considering leaving Microsoft Office for a cheaper, but still full-feature alternative. For $10 per user, per month, Google Drive for Work has unlimited storage, full file encryption both locally, on Google servers, and in both directions of transit from devices to the cloud.

Google also offers bosses a suite of APIs in Google Drive for Work to track how their employees are using Drive and to audit document changes from any employee's Drive.

Tap That App?


Yes, especially if you're running a low-budget small business. But the newly native Office editing abilities and hassle-free conversion and collaboration is a great tool for anyone. And since it's free, there's no reason to use Microsoft 365 or any other Office-editing app that costs money (unless you already bought it).

You can get the updated Google Drive app here, the Google Docs app here, the Google Sheets app (for Excel docs) here, and the new Google Slides app here for Android.

And if you still prefer the QuickOffice standalone app, which is also free, download it here now (and here for iOS). You're running out of time for this app, because once Google has completely rolled out native Office editing in its Drive apps, QuickOffice will disappear from the Play Store, according to Android Police.

The newest-updated Google apps and Slides are only currently available for Android, but Google says they're coming soon for iPhone and iPad.