The Google Docs team has posted an update discussing some recently released features for their Presentations component and a few minor updates to their core document management components.

If you are among those inclined to look at the entire Google Apps suite as a challenger to Microsoft Office, then you're sure to be sent giggling into the streets at these anemic "improvements" which seem small steps getting the web-based products up to only five or six generations behind Office instead of seven or eight. But if you are one of those who looks at this as a different sort of product entirely, with different goals and strengths, then I think you'll think they are pretty cool, and quickly getting someplace where they fulfill most of the major needs of the average user.

The "Import from PowerPoint" feature, incidentally, may be one of the strongest signs that Google is going after Microsoft on some level... similar features in early versions of Word and Excel were one of the major factors in their ascendancy over more dominant competitors back in the day, lowering the costs of switching and offering an apparent openness and flexibility that users still find enticing.