Embed Google Presentations in Your Website

The armamentarium of embeddable objects (photo slideshows, YouTube videos) just increased with another member -- Google Presentations. Users of SldieShare were able to embed presentations for years, so why is this news? Two reasons: the power of Google and the stickiness of Google account. In all likelihood, Google will be around in 5 (10?) years and your uploaded presentations will still be on their servers. On the other hand, nobody is really sure where SlideShare will be in 5 years. Google launched personalized accounts several years ago to improve user experience by saving settings but also to create "stickiness" -- higher likelihood that the visitors will stay around to use other Google services while already logged in. For example, Bloglines is every bit as good RSS reader as Google Reader but I use Google. Why? Because I am already logged in Gmail, Blogger, Docs, Bookmarks, and it just does not make sense to type/remember different passwords for Bloglines, SlideShare, BuzzWord, Del.icio.us, etc.

In any case, despite the initial lukewarm response by most bloggers, Google Presentations is a useful tool. Some nice features are:

- ability to share documents and collaborate
- online chat with multiple users during presentation
- embeddable presentations



I used Google Presentations when I hosted Medicine 2.0 -- the blog carnival about Web 2.0 and Medicine (see above). On a side note, it looks like we will have Web 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, etc. at some point in the future but this is a topic for another blog post.

Further reading:
Embed Google Presentations. Google Blogoscoped.
Embed PowerPoint Presentations Using Google Docs. Google Operating System.
Google Presentations Launches Today. CasesBlog, 9/18/2007.
Medicine 2.0, Blog Carnival About Web 2.0 and Medicine, Year 1, Issue 9. CasesBlog, 09/2007.
Web 3.0 and medicine -- Giustini 335 (7633): 1273 -- BMJ, 12/2007.

Updated: 04/08/2008