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People would just stop using Office then. Google has seriously eroded Microsoft’s dominance here — I’ve worked at a few major companies who have switched and Go

People would just stop using Office then. Google has seriously eroded Microsoft’s dominance here — I’ve worked at a few major companies who have switched and Google is a far more cloud-native solution. It’s honestly more intuitive to the workers that we’re hiring. Microsoft’s Office leverage is gone. If they try to use it as a hammer in defense of their platform, their market share will drop. Their only option now is to try to increase the platform buy-in again.

CamelCaseName 9y ago
How powerful and easy to pick up is Google App Script compared to VBA? Given your experience, do you see GAS overtaking VBA, and if so, in which fields? (Finance?) What industries were the companies you helped switch over working in? I ask because I'm while I'm roughly intermediate with VBA, I'm not sure if I should continue pursuing VBA or invest in something that might be more valuable in the future.
- OJFord 9y ago
  > How powerful and easy to pick up is Google App Script compared to VBA? Isn't it just JavaScript + a library?
- nunez 9y ago
  GAS is super easy to get (it’s JavaScript), but until you can execute scripts client-side, it won’t ever really take off. It also has the same problem that VBA has in that the code resides local to the object consuming it (spreadsheet, doc, etc), so you can’t version control it like you would for a normal application). VBA even has the advantage of being able to load .NET libraries, which is huge given that you can let the .NET VM do the heavy lifting and use VBA to lay results out onto your sheet or Word doc.
- exelius 9y ago
  It already has. I have multiple Fortune 500 clients who hired some offshore teams to rebuild their core VBA/Excel workbooks in GAS. Google provides ample support when you pay this much. In the early days Sheets wasn’t as good; but I would say it is better than Excel if you’re willing to spend a few million to port your complex macros. Slides still blows though. Edit: Industry largely is irrelevant; most big companies have custom software running their main production line (be that software, telecom or manufacturing). MS Office / Google Apps have a sweet spot in back-office functions. Google Apps allows a lot more automation (and most of the kids coming out of school know basic programming these days). No; it’s not as good as custom version-controlled software, but it’s a hell of a lot better than e-mailing .xlsx files back and forth. You can more or less treat a Google sheet as a lambda function, which is pretty neat.
nunez 9y ago
Definitely not true. While many companies have active G Suite subscriptions, they still pay for Office 365 because Word, Excel and Access (yes, Access) don’t have any real competition. Word and Excel are gargantuan pieces of software. VBA aside (which is used very very heavily, and Google’s Scripting Framework doesn’t compare given that everything is executed on their servers), there are some really niche features deep inside of Word that people at big companies use daily. Also, Sheets is slow as hell compared to Excel, even on small time spreadsheets. Not going to work on the trading floor. Then there is the whole “kind of sort of works offline” bit that really diminishes the value of using Google Docs. Docs basically doesn’t work on low bandwidth connections, which is a daily reality for a lot of business people that travel. That’s the main reason why I prefer Office; it is a lot easier to work on talks and blog posts offline with it.
- exelius 9y ago
  In the corporate world, this is seen as a feature. I’m not kidding you — the fact that documents can’t be viewed offline easily is touted as a feature since if a laptop is stolen, the valuable data won’t be there (supposedly).
alien_ 9y ago
Office and productivity software is far from a killer mobile app. Mobile devices are mainly used for real-time communication or consuming content, much less at creating significant amount of content, where MSOffice shines on the desktop.
OJFord 9y ago
Would they? If your work uses Office 365, and you're currently on Android but you hear that Microsoft is coming out with a forked Android platform that while devoid of Google apps does have Outlook, and the rest of the suite... would you really not be even slightly tempted?
samfisher83 9y ago
Excel is probably the most used piece of business software in the world. Most companies are run on it.

CamelCaseName 9y ago

How powerful and easy to pick up is Google App Script compared to VBA? Given your experience, do you see GAS overtaking VBA, and if so, in which fields? (Finance?) What industries were the companies you helped switch over working in? I ask because I'm while I'm roughly intermediate with VBA, I'm not sure if I should continue pursuing VBA or invest in something that might be more valuable in the future.

OJFord 9y ago
> How powerful and easy to pick up is Google App Script compared to VBA? Isn't it just JavaScript + a library?
nunez 9y ago
GAS is super easy to get (it’s JavaScript), but until you can execute scripts client-side, it won’t ever really take off. It also has the same problem that VBA has in that the code resides local to the object consuming it (spreadsheet, doc, etc), so you can’t version control it like you would for a normal application). VBA even has the advantage of being able to load .NET libraries, which is huge given that you can let the .NET VM do the heavy lifting and use VBA to lay results out onto your sheet or Word doc.
exelius 9y ago
It already has. I have multiple Fortune 500 clients who hired some offshore teams to rebuild their core VBA/Excel workbooks in GAS. Google provides ample support when you pay this much. In the early days Sheets wasn’t as good; but I would say it is better than Excel if you’re willing to spend a few million to port your complex macros. Slides still blows though. Edit: Industry largely is irrelevant; most big companies have custom software running their main production line (be that software, telecom or manufacturing). MS Office / Google Apps have a sweet spot in back-office functions. Google Apps allows a lot more automation (and most of the kids coming out of school know basic programming these days). No; it’s not as good as custom version-controlled software, but it’s a hell of a lot better than e-mailing .xlsx files back and forth. You can more or less treat a Google sheet as a lambda function, which is pretty neat.

nunez 9y ago

Definitely not true. While many companies have active G Suite subscriptions, they still pay for Office 365 because Word, Excel and Access (yes, Access) don’t have any real competition. Word and Excel are gargantuan pieces of software. VBA aside (which is used very very heavily, and Google’s Scripting Framework doesn’t compare given that everything is executed on their servers), there are some really niche features deep inside of Word that people at big companies use daily. Also, Sheets is slow as hell compared to Excel, even on small time spreadsheets. Not going to work on the trading floor. Then there is the whole “kind of sort of works offline” bit that really diminishes the value of using Google Docs. Docs basically doesn’t work on low bandwidth connections, which is a daily reality for a lot of business people that travel. That’s the main reason why I prefer Office; it is a lot easier to work on talks and blog posts offline with it.

exelius 9y ago
In the corporate world, this is seen as a feature. I’m not kidding you — the fact that documents can’t be viewed offline easily is touted as a feature since if a laptop is stolen, the valuable data won’t be there (supposedly).

alien_ 9y ago

Office and productivity software is far from a killer mobile app. Mobile devices are mainly used for real-time communication or consuming content, much less at creating significant amount of content, where MSOffice shines on the desktop.

OJFord 9y ago

Would they? If your work uses Office 365, and you're currently on Android but you hear that Microsoft is coming out with a forked Android platform that while devoid of Google apps does have Outlook, and the rest of the suite... would you really not be even slightly tempted?

samfisher83 9y ago

Excel is probably the most used piece of business software in the world. Most companies are run on it.