4 ms·

Having worked in a number of large commercial enterprise (non-IT product) and government environments, next to no one uses Google Docs. The ones that do, are lo

Having worked in a number of large commercial enterprise (non-IT product) and government environments, next to no one uses Google Docs. The ones that do, are looked at sideways and are a pain to work with due to interoperability issues with Word/Excel and Docs/Sheets (yes, they do exist). Microsoft has also taken some pretty big steps forward over the last couple of years when it comes to document collaboration/sharing. Most Office applications now allow for live sharing/collaboration via the desktop apps. There’s also the O365 web-based capability similar to Docs/Sheets. Plus, these are integrated with other O365 products like OneDrive and SharePoint (laugh, but SharePoint is unlikely to go away anytime soon with enterprise customers). I have yet to find a product differentiator that GSuite (or whatever they call it now) has over M365/O365, except maybe sometimes price. On the other hand, Microsoft has a number of differentiators over Google’s products. Even with the price differences, Enterprise customers get significant volume licensing discounts and see cost savings through not having to retrain everyone from IT administrators to day-to-day users.

throwaway201103 6y ago
Inertia is a thing. A guy I work with has used Office for decades. He's never even tried Google Docs. Refuses to look at stuff if you send him a Google drive link. Asks for a Word document. He doesn't do anything sophisticated. Google Docs would be more than adequate. Just set in his ways.
- bladegash 6y ago
  Yep and by my completely speculative estimate, that is likely the case for 90% of people born before the mid-90s. Office has been pretty pervasive in professional work and even academic environments for quite some time. My first exposure to Word/Excel was in high school and its use was continued through college. I forgot to mention previously all the integration with existing system administration capabilities widely in use at companies (e.g., Active Directory, identity management/permissions/sharing permissions, etc.). It is only becoming more ingrained with Azure AD, M365 Enterprise licensing, etc. I’m sure I am missing something, but I do not understand why a business - other than very small ones - would choose to use GSuite.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    I’m sure I am missing something, but I do not understand why a business - other than very small ones - would choose to use GSuite. But almost all businesses are SMEs, and almost all of those are small businesses. If you're operating at enterprise scale, and you've got dedicated contacts at Microsoft and negotiating leverage in your commercial terms for using their products and access to the top editions of those products, you're moving in a different world to most smaller businesses. That's true whether we're talking about Office, Windows or almost anything else Microsoft offers these days. For a small organisation, the pricing structure and artificially broken products and lock-in effects and so on are significant downsides to going with Microsoft. On the other hand, if you are part of a large organisation, being able to create and collaborate on a single document or spreadsheet in isolation is still the foundation of everything, but being able to manage large numbers of those documents and spreadsheets and access to them by large numbers of people for large numbers of reasons is also an important requirement. I have yet to encounter an online competitor that really has powerful tools for things like formal revision management, organising the full set of information for large projects, and constructing large, complicated documents with many contributors who have different responsibilities. There's a whole ecosystem around MS Office that deals with these kinds of issues, but a smaller organisation would probably have little need of it.
    - bladegash 6y ago
      Those are all certainly fair points and I definitely appreciate you taking the time to provide your perspective! I agree with you that some of the functionality in O365 (or M365 for that matter) is unnecessary for many small businesses. However, for the features that are most likely to be necessary, the costs and terms are not all that unreasonable and Microsoft does do their Business level plans without an annual contract. Further, the costs between GSuite and O365 are comparable, while features are disproportionately in Microsoft's favor. Whether those features are needed or not, is a legitimate question to ask though. Can you be a little more specific about the artificially broken products and lock-in effects are you referring to? I have not experienced those types of issues with any of the O365 tenants I set-up and currently manage.
geewee 6y ago
At least if you're on a Linux desktop, the GSuite experience is vastly better than the online Office 365 one, as there's no desktop clients. That's a pretty small market segment though.
- bladegash 6y ago
  Yeah, that is a good point! Like you mentioned though, it’s a very small market segment and I could see Microsoft spending more resources on Linux interoperability in the future. They have already been doing it with some products and I would be surprised if it’s not on their mid-long term roadmap.

throwaway201103 6y ago

Inertia is a thing. A guy I work with has used Office for decades. He's never even tried Google Docs. Refuses to look at stuff if you send him a Google drive link. Asks for a Word document. He doesn't do anything sophisticated. Google Docs would be more than adequate. Just set in his ways.

bladegash 6y ago
Yep and by my completely speculative estimate, that is likely the case for 90% of people born before the mid-90s. Office has been pretty pervasive in professional work and even academic environments for quite some time. My first exposure to Word/Excel was in high school and its use was continued through college. I forgot to mention previously all the integration with existing system administration capabilities widely in use at companies (e.g., Active Directory, identity management/permissions/sharing permissions, etc.). It is only becoming more ingrained with Azure AD, M365 Enterprise licensing, etc. I’m sure I am missing something, but I do not understand why a business - other than very small ones - would choose to use GSuite.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  I’m sure I am missing something, but I do not understand why a business - other than very small ones - would choose to use GSuite. But almost all businesses are SMEs, and almost all of those are small businesses. If you're operating at enterprise scale, and you've got dedicated contacts at Microsoft and negotiating leverage in your commercial terms for using their products and access to the top editions of those products, you're moving in a different world to most smaller businesses. That's true whether we're talking about Office, Windows or almost anything else Microsoft offers these days. For a small organisation, the pricing structure and artificially broken products and lock-in effects and so on are significant downsides to going with Microsoft. On the other hand, if you are part of a large organisation, being able to create and collaborate on a single document or spreadsheet in isolation is still the foundation of everything, but being able to manage large numbers of those documents and spreadsheets and access to them by large numbers of people for large numbers of reasons is also an important requirement. I have yet to encounter an online competitor that really has powerful tools for things like formal revision management, organising the full set of information for large projects, and constructing large, complicated documents with many contributors who have different responsibilities. There's a whole ecosystem around MS Office that deals with these kinds of issues, but a smaller organisation would probably have little need of it.
  - bladegash 6y ago
    Those are all certainly fair points and I definitely appreciate you taking the time to provide your perspective! I agree with you that some of the functionality in O365 (or M365 for that matter) is unnecessary for many small businesses. However, for the features that are most likely to be necessary, the costs and terms are not all that unreasonable and Microsoft does do their Business level plans without an annual contract. Further, the costs between GSuite and O365 are comparable, while features are disproportionately in Microsoft's favor. Whether those features are needed or not, is a legitimate question to ask though. Can you be a little more specific about the artificially broken products and lock-in effects are you referring to? I have not experienced those types of issues with any of the O365 tenants I set-up and currently manage.

geewee 6y ago

At least if you're on a Linux desktop, the GSuite experience is vastly better than the online Office 365 one, as there's no desktop clients. That's a pretty small market segment though.

bladegash 6y ago
Yeah, that is a good point! Like you mentioned though, it’s a very small market segment and I could see Microsoft spending more resources on Linux interoperability in the future. They have already been doing it with some products and I would be surprised if it’s not on their mid-long term roadmap.