6 ms·

At the massive institution I work at, we recently went all-in on O365 18 months ago and are now switching to Google (over the next 12 months). So perhaps, but t

At the massive institution I work at, we recently went all-in on O365 18 months ago and are now switching to Google (over the next 12 months). So perhaps, but the room for change seems to be evident.

judge2020 9y ago
One issue currently preventing our move is the lack of a true desktop app. Sometimes you just need the native windows experience instead of your browser taking up even more ram to open a spreadsheet.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  For email? Yet to find a situation that requires it.
  - hug 9y ago
    The answer to this is fairly simple: Offline access to email. You need a client for this, and an arbitrary browser won't do. Solved problem on iOS and Android with whatever mail app you want to use, but those are of course apps. Solved problem on the PC with Outlook or "Gmail Offline", but "Gmail Offline" is a chrome-only feature so is, as far as I'm concerned, an offline email client built into Chrome, not a feature of Gmail per-se. See also: Any IMAP mail client.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      An arbitrary client won’t do either. It would have to be a specific one. So now that we’ve removed the need for an arbitrary client in both cases why can’t localStorage/etc solve this to most users satisfaction?
  - mastazi 9y ago
    Desktop email clients like Outlook let you do things such as: select all email messages -> save as .txt -> feed the .txt to a python script that extracts useful data. If we were using GSuite I guess we could use the Gmail API to get the message body data, but at the end of the day having local access is just more convenient (edit: faster). Edit: for everything else that is not email (spreadsheet, word processor, presentations) there are also similar advantages related to having full fledged desktop applications.
    - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
      Interesting use case. What exactly are you extracting from email that you’d need a python script for computing?
      - mastazi 9y ago
        We do clustering on unstructured text and we output data in a Jupyter notebook. It's a proof of concept for now and the production pipeline will be a bit different. The whole Python ecosystem is awesome for this type of prototyping.
      - rubidium 9y ago
        And that you couldn't easily do with Microsoft flow and office 365?
        mastazi 9y ago
        See my response to parent
- braderhart 9y ago
  Have you never heard of LibreOffice? Google Drive and alternatives automatically can convert to open document format. It is pretty common. Surprised you never heard of it before.
- smogcutter 9y ago
  Not to mention that sheets is far from a replacement for excel.
  - radium3d 9y ago
    May I ask what you do with Excel that you cannot do with sheets?
    - paulddraper 9y ago
      I'm sure the actual list is long, but I'd be happy if I could tweak graphs appearance, or do polynomial regression.
    - purple-again 9y ago
      Libreoffice and Sheets are both dead in the water non starters for all of the finance guys that I know. The ability to open a million line csv file with 75 columns and execute a search and replace without leaking battery acid out of every orifice in your machine. The hundreds of long complex well vetted plug ins that are drop and play with Excel which serve niche hard to reason about corners of regulation legalese. There has been so much cross pollination between the major firms that everybody has these tools and implements their own little tweaks. The ability to quickly spin up a VBA macro to do some heavy lifting in a client provided 250 worksheet workbook each with 50000 line items (none escape quoted so every address with a comma in it malformed the data on client export).
      - Pxtl 9y ago
        The CSV support in Excel is a nightmare. And it still does moronic destructive things if it mistakes anything you're doing for a date.
        olavgg 9y ago
        That is my experience too, and I also find LibreOffice to be much faster than Excel for huge datasets. The biggest difference for me is clearly file compatibility and that is why I still use mostly Excel.
- adamb_ 9y ago
  Absolutely. Sometimes you just want to output a quick CSV, open it locally in familiar spreadsheet environment, and explore.
spydum 9y ago
we did a similar thing. nobody can figure out why. gsuite is cool for a couple hundred people, when you dont want to pay for office licenses for everyone. it makes even less sense when you already do. there is a serious productivity delta between gsuite and o365, especially if you are like 90% of the other companies where Excel is king (no, sheets is not a suitable stand-in).
- skj 9y ago
  FYI Google used gsuite internally for its 20k-or-whatever engineers and, in my opinion, it works fantastically. (I'm a Google engineer)
  - spydum 9y ago
    Collab tools are fabulous no doubt, but sheets feels entirely neglected and basic. Permissions model is clunky and gsuite governance is nonexistent - you have to buy a CASB license to do anything effectively. It's not a bad suite, I just think it's confused on some areas (don't even get me started on the chat/conference systems tho)
  - tomnipotent 9y ago
    I'll bet money that accounting & finance teams at Google use Excel.
    - nimchimpsky 9y ago
      lol. Tru dat. Excel is a beast.
    - rootsudo 9y ago
      How do we find this out?
      - intended 9y ago
        Empirically we buy a company, tell the accounting team that we are changing to gsuite and see if the CTO gets fired, or the accounting team quits, or the company gets a hit. IF neither, Gsuite is ok.
zeth___ 9y ago
Never under estimate the capability of the C-suite to create busy work for everyone in the name of corporate vision.
philliphaydon 9y ago
I wish we were using O365, we are stuck on Google and its horrid. Google Docs is literally the worst thing in the world if you're not a chrome user.
- mrb 9y ago
  Word works best on Windows. Google Doc works best on Chrome. It's totally expected that if you go with the vendor's full stack, things will run better. I've worked—at Google—extensively on documents using Google Docs on a Chromebook and the experience is pretty smooth.
  - philliphaydon 9y ago
    O365 works great on Firefox in any OS. GDoc sucks on any browser that isn't Chrome. The most frustrating thing is that GDoc's is the only app I'm aware of that doesn't support right click / copy-paste from the context menu in any browser other than Chrome. That annoys me the most.
    - laken 9y ago
      Microsoft’s Office Online (their version of Google Docs) has the same behavior on Firefox with right click clipboard functions as GDocs, unfortunately.

At the massive institution I work at, we recently went all-in on O365 18 months ago and are now switching to Google (over the next 12 months). So perhaps, but the room for change seems to be evident.

judge2020 9y ago

One issue currently preventing our move is the lack of a true desktop app. Sometimes you just need the native windows experience instead of your browser taking up even more ram to open a spreadsheet.

abritinthebay 9y ago
For email? Yet to find a situation that requires it.
- hug 9y ago
  The answer to this is fairly simple: Offline access to email. You need a client for this, and an arbitrary browser won't do. Solved problem on iOS and Android with whatever mail app you want to use, but those are of course apps. Solved problem on the PC with Outlook or "Gmail Offline", but "Gmail Offline" is a chrome-only feature so is, as far as I'm concerned, an offline email client built into Chrome, not a feature of Gmail per-se. See also: Any IMAP mail client.
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    An arbitrary client won’t do either. It would have to be a specific one. So now that we’ve removed the need for an arbitrary client in both cases why can’t localStorage/etc solve this to most users satisfaction?
- mastazi 9y ago
  Desktop email clients like Outlook let you do things such as: select all email messages -> save as .txt -> feed the .txt to a python script that extracts useful data. If we were using GSuite I guess we could use the Gmail API to get the message body data, but at the end of the day having local access is just more convenient (edit: faster). Edit: for everything else that is not email (spreadsheet, word processor, presentations) there are also similar advantages related to having full fledged desktop applications.
  - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    Interesting use case. What exactly are you extracting from email that you’d need a python script for computing?
    - mastazi 9y ago
      We do clustering on unstructured text and we output data in a Jupyter notebook. It's a proof of concept for now and the production pipeline will be a bit different. The whole Python ecosystem is awesome for this type of prototyping.
    - rubidium 9y ago
      And that you couldn't easily do with Microsoft flow and office 365?
      - mastazi 9y ago
        See my response to parent
braderhart 9y ago
Have you never heard of LibreOffice? Google Drive and alternatives automatically can convert to open document format. It is pretty common. Surprised you never heard of it before.
smogcutter 9y ago
Not to mention that sheets is far from a replacement for excel.
- radium3d 9y ago
  May I ask what you do with Excel that you cannot do with sheets?
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    I'm sure the actual list is long, but I'd be happy if I could tweak graphs appearance, or do polynomial regression.
  - purple-again 9y ago
    Libreoffice and Sheets are both dead in the water non starters for all of the finance guys that I know. The ability to open a million line csv file with 75 columns and execute a search and replace without leaking battery acid out of every orifice in your machine. The hundreds of long complex well vetted plug ins that are drop and play with Excel which serve niche hard to reason about corners of regulation legalese. There has been so much cross pollination between the major firms that everybody has these tools and implements their own little tweaks. The ability to quickly spin up a VBA macro to do some heavy lifting in a client provided 250 worksheet workbook each with 50000 line items (none escape quoted so every address with a comma in it malformed the data on client export).
    - Pxtl 9y ago
      The CSV support in Excel is a nightmare. And it still does moronic destructive things if it mistakes anything you're doing for a date.
      - olavgg 9y ago
        That is my experience too, and I also find LibreOffice to be much faster than Excel for huge datasets. The biggest difference for me is clearly file compatibility and that is why I still use mostly Excel.
adamb_ 9y ago
Absolutely. Sometimes you just want to output a quick CSV, open it locally in familiar spreadsheet environment, and explore.

spydum 9y ago

we did a similar thing. nobody can figure out why. gsuite is cool for a couple hundred people, when you dont want to pay for office licenses for everyone. it makes even less sense when you already do. there is a serious productivity delta between gsuite and o365, especially if you are like 90% of the other companies where Excel is king (no, sheets is not a suitable stand-in).

skj 9y ago
FYI Google used gsuite internally for its 20k-or-whatever engineers and, in my opinion, it works fantastically. (I'm a Google engineer)
- spydum 9y ago
  Collab tools are fabulous no doubt, but sheets feels entirely neglected and basic. Permissions model is clunky and gsuite governance is nonexistent - you have to buy a CASB license to do anything effectively. It's not a bad suite, I just think it's confused on some areas (don't even get me started on the chat/conference systems tho)
- tomnipotent 9y ago
  I'll bet money that accounting & finance teams at Google use Excel.
  - nimchimpsky 9y ago
    lol. Tru dat. Excel is a beast.
  - rootsudo 9y ago
    How do we find this out?
    - intended 9y ago
      Empirically we buy a company, tell the accounting team that we are changing to gsuite and see if the CTO gets fired, or the accounting team quits, or the company gets a hit. IF neither, Gsuite is ok.

zeth___ 9y ago

Never under estimate the capability of the C-suite to create busy work for everyone in the name of corporate vision.

philliphaydon 9y ago

I wish we were using O365, we are stuck on Google and its horrid. Google Docs is literally the worst thing in the world if you're not a chrome user.

mrb 9y ago
Word works best on Windows. Google Doc works best on Chrome. It's totally expected that if you go with the vendor's full stack, things will run better. I've worked—at Google—extensively on documents using Google Docs on a Chromebook and the experience is pretty smooth.
- philliphaydon 9y ago
  O365 works great on Firefox in any OS. GDoc sucks on any browser that isn't Chrome. The most frustrating thing is that GDoc's is the only app I'm aware of that doesn't support right click / copy-paste from the context menu in any browser other than Chrome. That annoys me the most.
  - laken 9y ago
    Microsoft’s Office Online (their version of Google Docs) has the same behavior on Firefox with right click clipboard functions as GDocs, unfortunately.