Melissa Karwowski is among the Google's faithful: frequently "googling" topics on the Web, checking her personal "G-mail" account, even using iGoogle software to create her personal home page.

But it will be awhile before her Green Tree-based employer, search engine marketing firm Impaqt, chucks Microsoft for Google Inc.'s new package of lower-priced business software that includes more powerful workplace versions of their search, e-mail and mapping tools so popular with consumers. "I'd have to get that approved by my manager, and she'd have to get it approved by hers. " Ms. Karwowski said.

Working from the bottom up, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Web giant is aiming to incite a revolution -- more like a workplace uprising -- by taking on Microsoft's dominance of the office computer one city and one employee at a time.

Its strategy is simple: stir discontent among the working masses fed up with the status quo, and their bosses will take notice. Its goal is not so simple: toppling Microsoft from its $11 billion vise grip on office computers.

This time, the next-to-overnight tech titan is starting small -- sending teams of Google-vangelists on a 15-city road show to roundup and fire up the masses.

The free breakfast seminars in the likes of Phoenix, Denver, Detroit and, this week, Pittsburgh, remind company cogs who spend their days sifting through e-mail, tackling spread sheets and pushing company documents through the bureaucracy just how stressed out they are.

"This is completely insane," Google product manager Cyrus Mistry told a crowd of about 50 -- including representatives from Alcoa, Federated Investors and the University of Pittsburgh -- at the Renaissance Hotel, Downtown.

"This is not what people should be doing all day long," Mr. Mistry said of the time employees spend manually sifting and shuffling e-mail from folder to folder. "We need a new way."

Google, whose alternative to Microsoft software includes spreadsheets, calendars, writing and publishing documents in print and on the Web, is betting that its reputation for making it easy for consumers to search the Web, e-mail, and organize information on their computers will easily turn them into loyalists at work.

The new Google way, Mr. Mistry told the crowd, "embraces chaos" and uses the company's easy-to-use Web-based software "gadgets" to get the job done.

The firm is working both ends of the corporate spectrum -- riling up workers while working behind-the-scenes with the bosses. Google marketing Paula Bentlage said new customers include Toys R Us, the University of Arizona and the Egyptian government.

But some observers noted that its business software lacks some of the bells and whistles that make Microsoft's Office so appealing.

At a cost of $50 per user per year, it's the small firms with tight technology budgets and little or no technical support staff for which Google's business software makes sense, said Jupiter Research analyst Kevin Heisler.

"You're probably not likely to switch over to Google or make the transition easily, unless you're a small company," he said.

In public, Google executives have shied-away from publicly mounting a challenge to their Redmond, Wash.-based rival. "I don't know that our goal is to uproot Microsoft," Mr. Mistry said at this week's meeting.

Still, industry watchers point out that conquering the office is merely a sliver of Google's ultimate ambition to be at the center of what people -- consumers and companies -- do.

But its grass-roots campaign may take awhile to take root with the masses. A member of a team that recommends but doesn't ultimately buy the company's software, Ms. Karwowski found Google to be "a lot more affordable and very appealing, but it's not as robust as Office."

Impaqt, she added, will likely give a test-run of Google's software, but the company hasn't set a date.