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Aside from the single sign-on, I don't find the integration of Google products to be anywhere close to Microsoft's. When Google releases a new product, it's li

Aside from the single sign-on, I don't find the integration of Google products to be anywhere close to Microsoft's. When Google releases a new product, it's like the almost expect you to use it in isolation, but with your same account. And they love releasing new products. Google Calendar, Tasks, Keep, etc. Microsoft Teams brings together Office 365, Exchange, Share point, OneDrive, and then adds collab features on top for comms and organisation. You get your full existing Outlook Calendar appearing in teams, you get all your Outlook contacts, you can link to any doc in your OneD, shared edit, you get group chats and channels, you can create "Teams" (where the name of the app comes from) made up of different people in your Exchange org. For anybody using Microsoft AD/Exchange within their org, Teams is a natural choice. You don't need a new account, everybody else in the org is immediately searchable and contactable, there's no data import needed. It just works. And "it just works" has been the central driving feature of anything that has taken off during this lockdown.

crazygringo 7y ago
I mean, if your org already uses Microsoft then of course it makes sense to use Teams. But I guess I don't see how Google apps are "in isolation", it's the exact opposite. All my contacts appear in every app, whether Calendar or Meet or Docs. Links work everywhere. The Google concept of a team is basically that when you create a Group you can generally use it everywhere else (to share a doc, to create a calendar event, to add to a Team Drive, to start a chat, to notify of a comment, etc.). And heck, the "side panel" functionality literally allows you to load Keep inside of Gmail, or Calendar inside of Docs, if you don't want to open a whole new tab. Clearly the opposite of isolation. Maybe you've just never used Google apps this way, that you haven't seen their integration? I find it entirely natural to have a tab for Mail, Calendar, Keep, Tasks, and several Docs and Sheets in my browser. Perhaps for me, my tabbed browser window is the same as your Teams app? In either case, it seems like the functionality and integration is largely identical. Again, it's just a matter of whether the icons are at the browser tab or home screen level, or whether they're inside of a single app. It seems to be a very minor distinction at the end of the day.

crazygringo 7y ago

I mean, if your org already uses Microsoft then of course it makes sense to use Teams. But I guess I don't see how Google apps are "in isolation", it's the exact opposite. All my contacts appear in every app, whether Calendar or Meet or Docs. Links work everywhere. The Google concept of a team is basically that when you create a Group you can generally use it everywhere else (to share a doc, to create a calendar event, to add to a Team Drive, to start a chat, to notify of a comment, etc.). And heck, the "side panel" functionality literally allows you to load Keep inside of Gmail, or Calendar inside of Docs, if you don't want to open a whole new tab. Clearly the opposite of isolation. Maybe you've just never used Google apps this way, that you haven't seen their integration? I find it entirely natural to have a tab for Mail, Calendar, Keep, Tasks, and several Docs and Sheets in my browser. Perhaps for me, my tabbed browser window is the same as your Teams app? In either case, it seems like the functionality and integration is largely identical. Again, it's just a matter of whether the icons are at the browser tab or home screen level, or whether they're inside of a single app. It seems to be a very minor distinction at the end of the day.