Google's presentation tool might make its debut soon as the Mountain View company already included slideshow functions in Gmail. Some of the mail solution's registered members are now able to see a new function displayed for the PowerPoint files attached to the messages. The "View as slideshow" feature allows the Gmail users to view the presentations created in PowerPoint straight into a browser window. Although it seems like the feature may be only a PowerPoint viewer, the function can represent the first sign of the upcoming presentation tool prepared by Google.

At this time, the feature is not included in my Gmail account, but Google Blogoscoped presented all the new functions that come with the slideshow tool. The right click brings a new menu that allows you to browse among the presentation's slides, download the file, or even embed the presentation into another webpage. As Ionut Alex observed, the embedded function is quite strange because an attachment is a private file but this new feature makes it public and available to other users.

"The embed code is still a little buggy - it currently lists "http://mail.google.comhttp://mail.google.com" in the URL - and doesn't even appear to be working yet. (Oddly, when trying to load the embedded URL, my browser tries to access Google's internal www.corp.google.com domain, suggesting they've not finished testing this feature yet.)" Tony Ruscoe from Google Blogoscoped said about the embedded feature.

As you might know, Google is currently working on its Office suite that is especially meant to challenge the old-fashioned Microsoft Office that is currently the leader in its category. Google's Docs & Spreadsheets is often regarded as the rival of the Microsoft suite, offering almost the same functions but in offline mode. A few weeks ago, Google's employees confirmed the upcoming presentation tool that will compete with PowerPoint for the same segment of users.