11 ms·

I'm at my first company that uses Google apps and it's been a bad experience. There's so much about email and calendaring that Outlook/Exchange got right that i

• mierle 13y ago
  I recently went through an acquisition where we transitioned from Google Apps to the Microsoft suite. I do not share your love of Microsoft's suite. Among the many problems I have with the Microsoft suite, Outlook is at the top of my list for generating the most frustration. GMail's priority inbox and new-style inbox where machine learning is used to sort out mail is a productivity booster for me. With Outlook, I regularly lose important mail because it is buried under the difficult to filter masses of other email. I could go on about how the lack of robust collaboration facilities are a direct time waster for my team, but I don't want to hijack this thread further...
  • freyr 13y ago
    So, we all like what we're used to. To the OP, insisting that apps running in browsers will never match native apps in terms of UX, that's a very audacious claim. There are many powerful, competent, and well-funded entities with a vested interest in improving the web app experience (including Google). I wouldn't claim they're doomed from the start. This could be just another example of a disruptive technology, that's initially lacking in certain conventional metrics, but has a lot of room for improvement above and beyond the entrenched competition.
    • gdulli 13y ago
      > There are many powerful, competent, and well-funded entities with a vested interest in improving the web app experience (including Google). I wouldn't claim they're doomed from the start. I've been using gmail for almost 10 years. I liked it from the start. But it's getting worse, not better. It's extremely slow compared to what I'm used to with Exchange and Outlook, and navigating around is more of a chore. How do I, for example, see who's in on an email list? I can't just right-click on the name of the list and see the members? (And don't even get me started on the new compose experience mess.) If Gmail was being continuously improved, I'd have a reason to be optimistic about it. I like being given free storage, but as far as usability goes, I have fonder memories of Eudora.
      • bhouston 13y ago
        Gmail UI sucks in part because they are going for the masses, not the power user. It isn't HTML5's fault.
        • deleted 13y ago
          [deleted]
        • gdulli 13y ago
          That could definitely be part of it. Outlook isn't dumbed down because it's not primarily aimed at home users. Maybe Gmail makes sense for few people in the office the way Outlook makes sense for few people at home. That doesn't change the fact that the bandwidth/latency profiles are different going to the server room in the building than going out to the internet. But I might see a big improvement over what Gmail is now if Google was being designed for business users.
          • source99 13y ago
            What features would you add to Gmail to make it more useful for business users? What UI fixes would you make? How do I get started writing plugins for gmail to add the above features and fixes?
  • peter_l_downs 13y ago
    I was about to write this comment!
  • falcolas 13y ago
    > where machine learning is used to sort out mail A few minutes spent setting up filters goes a long ways to nullifying the (frequently wrong for me) machine learning advantage in sorting emails.
    • riffraff 13y ago
      I think you forgot the pre-gmail days of setting up spam filters this way.
  • mathnode 13y ago
    Not having to attach files for even the slightest change is so much better. I really miss working for a company that uses google apps. Everything was online and centrally controlled. Jira, Confluence, AWS, Github, MediaWiki (some of these were self-hosted), and google apps. I have always preferred centralised computing, you can visually see the headaches and frustration drop for IT support technicians when they don't have to deal with minor printer, file, or collaboration issues. The kind of issues that were created by the "PC" in the business environment.
• selectnull 13y ago
  I would agree with you that excel is still more powerful than google spreadsheet but I don't agree that's because of native vs web type of app, because gmail is more powerful (and faster) than outlook. So let's call it subjective and give it a rest. The main reason we switched to google apps is collaboration: all the features in the world do not really matter when the whole team can open and edit a document at the same time and work on it seamlessly.
  • Spearchucker 13y ago
    How is Gmail faster than Outlook? I've used both for as long as they've existed, and both for work and personal use, and don't see where or how Gmail is faster. Not going to bother with the more powerful comment. This being HN and all I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're simply not familiar enough with Outlook, rather than trolling.
    • greenburger 13y ago
      At my last job I used Outlook and was very frustrated by the speed of searching my mail. Outlook seemed to take ages; Gmail on the other hand excels at searching. Disclaimer: I don't have as much experience with Outlook as I do with Gmail. And it could very likely have been the backend at my last place.
      • wvenable 13y ago
        Searching always been pretty much instantaneous for me at work. But when I used Outlook for my personal email it was terrible and I now use Thunderbird at home for superior searching. So I don't know -- probably everyone here is right.
      • ams6110 13y ago
        Outlook search is useless. You might as well just scroll through your messages by eye.
    • djokkataja 13y ago
      If they're not using a machine with SSD drives, then searching in Outlook can be slow. Otherwise I'd agree that Outlook is snappier except for the abominable keyboard shortcuts (and the hoops you have to jump through to set up anything approaching gmail-style/vim-style keyboard shortcuts).
• oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  I'm not here to defend Google apps (although I use them everyday) as much as web apps in general. > Once you're used to real applications What makes an application 'real' as opposed to 'not real'? Did you mean 'native'? > It's not just the features that are missing One potential upside to web apps is that, by constraint, a lot more thought needs to go into what should be included and what should be left out. For example, I find a lot of features in Word, Excel, etc. to be completely unnecessary and, moreover, counterproductive. A stripped-down interface, and even functionality set, does have some advantages. > I can't assume I can right click and get anything useful Often the case for native apps, although - admittedly - less so > The concept of a consistent menu bar you can access with hotkeys is gone Ditto. OSX almost solves the former at the expense of the latter. Applications like Chrome break the single-menu paradigm, though. Windows has a host of applications that invent their own menu styles/behaviours. > And the input lag is intolerable. Which specific file type? I rarely have problems with documents or spreadsheets. > Having all of my documents stored centrally is a real, but small, convenience It's a massive convenience for me. Dropbox is a good alternative, but I never want to go back to the days of having to remember to carry a specific USB stick everywhere I go and/or using network drives that are a nightmare to access anywhere but the office.
• myko 13y ago
  I'll give you maybe Excel, but for a standard document (and really most spreadsheets, which for me admittedly aren't very complicated and the real-time sharing is more important) Google Drive kills Microsoft's offerings to me. Especially mail. Gmail and its web interface are far superior to Outlook in usability, far less frustrating experience to me. Basically I disagree that 'native' apps will always be superior here. Docs and Gmail are already superior on the web IMO.
• cglee 13y ago
  This is how a disruptive technology starts. Google Apps doesn't have to be better, but the idea is that one day, you'll find Google Apps "good enough", with all the benefits of being online (and now offline, too). You're just on the higher end of the power-user curve, but your "good enough" day is approaching.
  • jonthn 13y ago
    Exactly.
  • psbp 13y ago
    I'm not sure why we give so much credence to legacy users complaining about new software (tech in general). Specific use cases are either adaptable or they'll work their way into the new whatever as demand grows. For example, I never dreamed of using my iPad w/ usb keyboard as a laptop replacement. It's not perfect, but it's rapidly becoming my preferable method of computing when I'm not at home.
  • thefallsman 13y ago
    I agree completely. Google apps have already come a long way. Even right out of the box, I liked the spreadsheet functionality. Excel is great for complex projects but for simple data storage, I find docs to be easier to use. I believe they were the first to auto sum columns in the bottom right hand corner, a feature which excel later added (feel free to correct me if i'm wrong). Something simple like this can be great for quick projects. I also like the ability to share within a group and allow multiple people to edit it. Imagine how much longer it takes to pass an excel sheet to 10 people and have them edit things.. I like the new update to edit without making instant changes that others will see. More to your point, I would say that the spreadsheet app is definitely "good enough" for basic use but the word copy in docs needs some work. I like the share-ability feature, but I think word is better in almost every way.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  • Chestofdraw 13y ago
• chestnut-tree 13y ago
  I completely agree. I'm not impressed by the new features of Google sheets when desktop apps have had these features (and much more) for years and years. Sure, Sheets runs in a browser which is an impressive feat, but it can't match the speed, responsiveness, or the much richer interactions possible with a desktop app. Plus, if I'm running a desktop app I can be pretty sure it's not tracking and recording my every action. Can the same be said for when you sign into to use Google Sheets?
• oftenwrong 13y ago
  >Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser. Always? You think that will be true 20 years from now?
  • VikingCoder 13y ago
    People forget that you used to boot your PC into a game disk to play a game. When people started playing games in Windows (full-screen), people like the grandparent poster would RAIL that booting to a game disk would always be superior to building a game on top of Windows.
    • nightski 13y ago
      We still have consoles, which get much better performance for the given hardware. True they can't compete with desktops even with the inefficiencies built in, but that is not relevant. The web faces fundamental limitations as long as it is built on the current architecture of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Windows, being a general purpose OS like Linux, has far less restrictions.
      • VikingCoder 13y ago
        John Carmack famously reported that you can double the performance of a game engine, if you know exactly what the hardware configuration is. I think that ENTIRELY explains the performance gain you see in consoles. And for most apps, no, there is no major difference in the user interface capabilities of a browser, and a Win32 GUI.
    • drzaiusapelord 13y ago
      Honestly, I'm always surprised that games can even run on top of windows and all its accouterments: anti-virus, indexing, random services, etc. I'm assuming there's some API in windows that lets games tell Windows to chill while the game is running.
  • gdulli 13y ago
    In 20 years I predict I'll still prefer executing code at the local OS level to thin client code hosted within an application running in the local OS. And having the application state updated after accessing local memory rather than after communicating across a network. We don't have to wait 20 years to experience the benefits of hosted applications, we have them today. And they sounded good to me. But after enjoying those benefits, I'd still give them up for the reliability and responsiveness of native applications.
• callesgg 13y ago
  I hear that stuff all the time, but no one seams to be able to tell me what those features that are "just right" are. I can't assume I can right click and get anything useful In a browser the right mouse button is generally not used that is right. The concept of a consistent menu bar you can access with hotkeys is gone. Google apps have hotkeys just learn them, then you can use them. the input lag is intolerable. That kind of depends on your computer/Internet line. For me google apps loads faster than outlook. But that is for me. Our company probably saves something like 3000 USD per user by using google apps. Mostly administrative costs. Could you list some features that are not just cause you are used to Outlook?
• grahamburger 13y ago
  Wow that is so far from my own personal experience it's difficult for me to understand. I am occasionally forced to use Outlook and/or Excel and it tends to ruin a large part of my day. Real time collaboration isn't just a cute convenience, it's the primary staple of my workflow. Strange to have such differing experiences.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• arnoldwh 13y ago
  As a power-excel user I agree with you that Sheets isn't quite there yet. Trying to use the same shortcut keys that I'm used to often makes me want to bang my head against a wall, either because they don't work at all or because even if they do, it's not as responsive. However, the pace of improvement is one that I think you should definitely consider before saying "never." Excel hasn't fundamentally changed for me since 2003 (outside of being able to more easily handle larger datasets from 65K+), so it seems like a fixed target while sheets continues to move closer (still with large gaps ahead!). If I need to do financial modeling, I'll likely continue to use excel. However, for many low-touch projects, I've almost completely switched over to sheets, which wasn't the case even a year ago.
  • rogerbinns 13y ago
    We use excel with pivot tables to explore data. The previous google sheets had such low limits it was pointless. The new one helpfully says "Sorry, an error occurred when opening this file. Please try again." on trying to open a 40MB uploaded CSV. Back to Excel I guess. I also LibreOffice on my Linux machines, but it is slow, single threaded and harder to use with pivot tables.
• ChuckMcM 13y ago
  They (Google Apps, and Office) are different. People who cannot take the time to adapt to different will always find the 'other' system inferior to the one they know.
  • gdulli 13y ago
    That's very specious to claim that's why someone would disagree with you, but I didn't have an opinion about Google Apps at first. It was only after spending a year using it and learning its differences and limitations that I thought it was inferior. As a software developer for 15+ years, learning new applications is not a difficult thing.
    • ChuckMcM 13y ago
      Fair enough. This is how I reason to that particular statement. My observation is that the judgment of 'superior' or 'inferior' requires a standard. In the absence of an unbiased exemplar, the first exposure and use becomes the 'default' standard. Further, that exposure tunes the work flow to minimize 'pain' which creates a pattern of behavior that achieves an objective at reduced pain (a trained workflow). On the exposure to a new system, the combination of using the previous system as the default exemplar, and using the trained work flow that the previous system encouraged, results in the second system being rated 'inferior' to the extent that it does not exactly duplicate specific characteristics or support exactly similar workflow.
      • gruseom 13y ago
        I agree with you and have often thought that this dynamic drives programmer psychology as well. It explains a lot about, e.g., programming language adoption, that is puzzling otherwise.
      • gdulli 13y ago
        Sure, people, including myself, do find the familiar appealing. But you can't extrapolate that to assume that any/most preference for existing standards is based on that instead of an actual understanding of which standard one prefers. It would be equally wrong and cynical for me to discount opinions for imagined reasons like, people who fit a younger or tech-friendly profile latch on to new technologies for the sake of being cutting edge, or that people in an industry that benefits from adoption of web apps would be biased towards Google apps. (Though the temptation exists.)
• SonicSoul 13y ago
  care to elaborate what things you're missing? I'm using Outlook/Exchange at work and find it extremely painful to work with. in Gmail i can get everything accomplished w/out using a mouse, it's really easy to label and go to labels, perform advanced searches sand easily create filters out of those. I'm using some Outlook plugins (i.e. ClearSight) to ease the pain but those have problems of their own. Even silly things like replying to an email in "sent" folder to include my previous response, Outlook defaults to replying to me so i have to "reply to all" and manually remove myself.. where as in gmail i can just hit "a" or "r" and it will know what i'm trying to do .. it's quite beautiful when you utilize more of the keyboard shortcuts.
• bane 13y ago
  I'm also at a company that's a 100% Google Apps and so have been forced to make a good go at it. - Gmail is great for near-term communications, having chat in the same place makes it a nice communications hub for immediate and near-term communications. I like it better than Outlook and it seems much snappier in day-to-day use. But I find it almost unusable when looking for emails from a while ago. It's so bad that I connect to my mailbox with Thunderbird and use Thunderbird's search to find anything. The problem is with the threaded conversations, I'll get search results, with the result buried somewhere in 1 of a 100 different emails in the conversation and as far as I know there's no easy way to sort through that pile. - Calendar is actually pretty good. For my use as good as Outlook. It integrates nicely with Gmail and gets the job done. It's also pretty snappy in day-to-day. - Document is okay for very simple things. Collaboration is a killer feature. But it's missing many of the things that makes Word superior. It's bad enough that people in my company who interact with anybody outside of the company are on the list for a personal MS-Office license...pretty much just for Word. The review functions (comments, change tracking etc.) in Word is absolutely needed if you work on any kind of contract/proposal paperwork. I find that I quickly exceed the formatting abilities of of the web app without getting into anything too fancy. - Sheets is also okay for very simple things. However, my accounting department sends me a pretty simple traditional spreadsheet showing timetracking for my staff and it's totally unviewable in the web app. I'd rather just use the web app then firing up Excel, but I simply can't. - I don't think I've ever bothered with the presentation app or anything else in the suite, but that's all I really need to use. TBH, it's actually a pretty nice suite that gets me about 70% where I need to be. However, all our internal tracking tools (Atlassian tools) really want documents instead of links to shared on-line docs so you end up importing/exporting everything as word docs anyways. but I have to say I think that this (2nd, 3rd?) rewrite of sheets looks really good. I'm going to try it out the next time I need to deal with staff time.
  • toddmorey 13y ago
    There's a sad irony that your #1 complaint about Google's email product is its search functionality.
    • ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
• owenwil 13y ago
  That's interesting. We just went the opposite direction, from Office 365 to Google Apps and we couldn't be happier. Office365 was slow, riddled with issues and a poor experience for anyone who used a Mac. Literally awful; we often couldn't talk between offices on Lync because of "reasons" according to Microsoft. Switching to Google was like a fresh breath of air.
• derefr 13y ago
  > I can't assume I can right click and get anything useful, I don't know if I'm going to get the browser's menu or the app's. The concept of a consistent menu bar you can access with hotkeys is gone. These are differences in the web UX paradigm, not differences in the capabilities of the technology. If Google wanted to build a web app "for people who were used to native apps," it could work and act exactly like this. In fact, web apps built to work inside native-app containers (Adobe Air, node-webkit, etc.) frequently do do this, and it's quite hard to tell that the result is a web-app at all. See, for example, Light Table.
• drzaiusapelord 13y ago
  > I'd prefer that any money my company might be saving be deducted from my paycheck if it would mean they'd get off of Google apps. Sysadmin here. How much are you willing to pay? I'll need at least 2 domain servers, exchange server, backup server/device/nas/tapes, etc to give you a stable and recoverable environment. I'll need an air conditioned server room/closet as well and a decent UPS. We'll need to pay for offsite data storage as well. How many people? We'll need CALs for each user. Licensing even for a trivial environment is easily 5 figures. Not to mention my salary. I guess you could go with some shitty MSP and small business server, but not if you actually value your company, uptimes, and data. Cloud services aren't big because they're good. They're big because they're cheaper than guys like me and all the stuff we work with. Your boss understands this. He's expecting you to deal with it.
  • qw 13y ago
    There are companies that provide hosting services for Exchange, so there is no need for a local installation.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • drzaiusapelord 13y ago
      If he's unhappy with cloud responsiveness, I doubt he'll be happy with yet another remote provider. Considering google apps are best in class, I'm not sure anything but a local approach would work here. >so there is no need for a local installation. At the very least, bossman would have to spring for some Office licenses. Oh, and probably a TS server and other toys so Joe Worker can work from home. Maybe office365 would work better for them? On /r/sysadmin its nothing but horror stories though. Also who do you fire when they lose all your data or you can't get mail for a week? MS's techs will be happy to write "please do the needful" helpdesk responses and laugh because you're such small potatoes to them.
  • ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
    Much better put than just saying 'diminishing returns'
• shoover 13y ago
  IMAP?
• kyrra 13y ago
  I went from a fully MS Office company, to a different company that used Google Apps, which was recently bought by another company that uses MS Office (that we are now moving to). I've had extensive experience with both products at this point. ===Outlook vs Gmail=== Outlook has a lot of things going for it. One of my main complaints is the functionality difference between the PC and OSX versions of Outlook. Outlook on the Mac just isn't as polished and is missing a number of features that the PC version has. On the plus side of Outlook, it has much more powerful searching/sorting abilities. You can sort messages by a large number of fields. Searching allows you to filter on different fields as well. The big part of searching is that Outlook will do substring searching (gmail will only match on whole words). Gmail excels at labels and visual presentation. As it is geared towards the basics that a user will need, a lot of data that you just may not care about is hidden away. This makes the bulk of what is important more visible. Also, I feel it presents long email threads in an easier-to-follow manner. Plus, once you learn keybinds in Gmail, it works the same on PC and Mac (which is totally different for Outlook). The other big plus for Gmail is proper handling of HTML. Outlooks HTML engine is pretty atrocious. Calendars: both are pretty comparable to one another. Outlook is nice as you get desktop alerts even with Outlook closed (google can do this with the 3rd party apps). But Google is nice in that you can set multiple people as being able to edit/update an event, so management of events can be easier. === Word vs Docs === I'd say the only way Google wins in this is collaboration. Being able to work on the same document with multiple people at the same time is such an amazing feature, I'm sad to lose it. But at the same time, there is so much that Google Docs just can't do. So much advanced formatting, numbering bullets, and layout that it just isn't all that great at. If you just need simple documents, Google Docs can handle it, just don't expect anything too fancy. === Excel vs Sheets === Sort of the same argument as Word vs Docs. Collaboration is amazing in Sheets, but it misses a lot of advanced functionality and formatting. It's ok for basic stuff, but don't try to do anything to advanced. Funny enough, in this category I feel Apple's Numbers is a really great tool. The D&D game I'm part of uses a Numbers sheet to handle characters, and one of the big features I like is embedding multiple tables into a single view (something Excel or Sheets can't do). === Powerpoint vs Presentation === Powerpoint again is similar to the Word vs Docs argument. Collaboration is the one main feature Google wins at. Google Presentation has 2 major issues for me: 1) it doesn't auto-resize text if you go beyond the size of the box (it just overflows). 2) layout of slides can slightly differ between edit view and presentation view, which can be very annoying.
• samspot 13y ago
  I have to say that I find the gmail experience vastly superior to thunderbird with my work email. There is something to be said for having a server do all the work instead of my desktop. Thunderbird is currently my #4 memory hog, behind java and firefox, on a computer that routinely hits 100% memory usage.
• MRSallee 13y ago
  > Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser. Depends on how you define "superior." Word has a lot more features that Google Documents, but if I don't need them... Personally, I am more than happy to use Google Docs over MS software. Google stuff doesn't take 45 seconds to load. Formatting rarely goes awry. It has the features need. I can access docs from anywhere and share with anyone and they don't have to install anything or even load an application to view it. I do not miss using MS Office one bit.
• K_REY_C 13y ago
  I've had the opposite experience while working with a company of <200 employees and several locations needing to have a set of communication tools to efficiently collaborate in real time. We're using the query functionality in Google spreadsheets to automatically parse data input by a variety of staff through Google forms for meetings gathering people often through Google hangouts. We're also able to make instantaneous and ubiquitous changes to training documents, policies, and other items (e.g. procedures) without worrying about versioning or if an old photocopy of a policy is still be used. I can't speak highly enough Google apps in this type of environment. We seriously considered Office 365 (which seems to focus almost entirely on getting you back to the desktop) but the inability to real-time collaborate on documents (at least at the time) was the first of many strikes against that suite as a viable option. YMMV depending on what you need to do, but for fast-paced collaborative work I can't imagine working without Google apps.
• aagha 13y ago
  Is it possible that maybe you're jus tnot a GMail power user? Given the choice between Gmail and Outlook, I choose former seven days a week, and twice on Sunday.
• sytelus 13y ago
  I wouldn't count on this: > Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser I firmly believe there would be no "native applications" within 10 years of time. Outlook is very easily the the application that I hate from bottom of my heart. You are correct that other alternatives are not that good either and that's why Outlook still lives on. Even in 2013, its search feature is laughing stock. It hangs all the time, takes up lots of memory, rules can't be other than presets, its ranking function is sort by date, it can't do spam, TODO list integration is mess, it blocks good attachments, it can't keep conversation togather, it screws HTML and even its spell check is straight from 18th century. If you look at release over release enhancements, it pretty much has remains same, as if there is no one really working on it. Outlook is a shame to human kind considering so many people has to use it despite of it being a pig.