back to article Does Microsoft have what it takes to topple Google Docs?

If you were to start a business today, would you bother buying desktop software for productivity and collaboration? Probably not, you'd employ some software option delivered as a service. For enterprises with a history of legacy, the move to online versions of on-prem is trickier but is being done. The question, however, is …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    The world turned upside down!

    Am I dreaming, a fair critique of MSFT offerings in El Reg?

    1. Andy 97

      Re: The world turned upside down!

      It's all gone covfefe.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The world turned upside down!

        Yes but this seems to be positive covfefe.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. hplasm
          Coat

          Re: The world turned upside down!

          Decaf Covfefe, anyone?

    2. TheVogon

      Re: The world turned upside down!

      Did this (very good) article's headline just get out of a Delorian?

      Microsoft have been wiping the floor with Google Docs for a couple of years now. There is a reason why you can get books on Amazon to help migrate from Google to Microsoft, but not visa versa....

      1. samster
        WTF?

        Re: The world turned upside down!

        Strongly disagree!

        1. I can open a password protected WORD or Powerpoint doc with Google's viewer but not with Office 363* - ridiculous!

        2.. Online collaboration is still clunky (cr*p) with Office 363*. I've had clients who are up and running on Google Doc for realtime collaboration across any device within minutes. To do the same on Office 363 takes a LOT of setup.

        3. Google Docs is much more mobile/cross-platform friendly. It just works...

        *there's still 2 days of downtime per annum :-)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The world turned upside down!

          Very close to no one uses the online versions of Office. Single digit percentages of the Office user base. Everyone still uses the thick clients on PC... and why wouldn't you if you are paying a large premium for them.

          1. nilfs2
            Windows

            Re: The world turned upside down!

            I do use the online version of Office apps at work, thick Outlook sucks donkey balls, OWA is where it is at, I have Debian on my work laptop, so it's nice to be able to use office without firing up a Windows VM. I use Libre Office from time to time, the problem with it is that it brakes the format on documents, specially marcos, if I didn't have to share documents with customers and coworkers, I would stick to libre Office, but that is not the case.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The world turned upside down!

        "Microsoft have been wiping the floor with Google Docs for a couple of years now. There is a reason why you can get books on Amazon to help migrate from Google to Microsoft, but not visa versa...."

        No one is migrating from Google to MSFT. The opposite it true. Verizon, Colgate, BBVA.. giant companies are migrating to Google. As MSFT started with close to 100% of the market a little over five years ago, they are still the market leader... but there has been much more movement away from MSFT.

        You may think MSFT is better (I do not), but at the end of the day, MSFT was and is just charging monopoly prices for simple stuff, word processing is not cutting edge. The question is not "what do you like better?". The question is, "tell me how our company is going to make an additional $600,000 a year in profit with Outlook, etc? Because that is the MSFT upcharge vs Google".

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The world turned upside down!

          Agree, there is really two groups pushing for Google. All the young people and financially prudent older people.... It is a strange confluence. Where the cool, new thing to do is also has the best business case.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The world turned upside down!

          "No one is migrating from Google to MSFT."

          Nope, lot of companies are migrating from Google Apps to Office 365. There are plenty of job adverts for exactly that. I have yet to see any adverts for someone migrating from Office 365 to Google!

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The world turned upside down!

            "Nope, lot of companies are migrating from Google Apps to Office 365. There are plenty of job adverts for exactly that. I have yet to see any adverts for someone migrating from Office 365 to Google!"

            Yeah, that's just not true. Battle cry of the MSFT admin or something. I just gave you the name of a bunch of companies with many tens or hundreds of thousands of users that have migrated to Google. I am not familiar with one company of any size that has migrated from Google to O365... maybe LinkedIn (although, humorously, I think they are still on Google).

            Also, what sort of "job adverts" are you looking at where they are asking for experience migrating from one productivity solution to another? Are these three month jobs? Usually consultants or business partners do all that work anyway.

  2. Pen-y-gors

    Publisher?

    Wow, I mean, just...wow! It sounds wonderful. Hang on a sec and I'll fire up my Office 365 subscription and get to work finishing my latest Publisher doc 'in the Cloud' (wow, doesn't that sound sooooo sexy and cool?)

    What? You mean...there isn't a version of Publisher in Office 365?

    Oh pooh.

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Office and Clouds and Stuff

      I love the sound of all this fluffy cloud stuff. Makes me want to put on my purple party dress and play with My Little Pony.

      Oh wait, I grew up 20 years ago and bitter experience has shown that life is just a bit more complicated than all that...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Office and Clouds and Stuff

        "Oh wait, I grew up 20 years ago and bitter experience has shown that life is just a bit more complicated than all that..."

        Probably what the guy at the steam plant said in 1930 about electricity distribution via power lines from a utility. "It would be great if we could just run a line into our building and pull as much electricity as we need out of the air, but it's more complex than that." It isn't though.

    2. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Publisher?

      Publisher is in my Office 365 subscription... /shrug

    3. Roq D. Kasba

      Re: Publisher?

      No, although a 365 sub gets you the latest downloadable if you want it :)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good article

    We're in the process of moving to O365 (it's cheaper than replacing an Exchange server) and coming up against some of the issues raised here. TBH, I can't believe how bad the local sync with OneDrive and SharePoint is at the moment (though all apparrently solved in On-Demand, coming soon - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/31/cloud_collaboriation_suite_microsoft/) and how people have coped with it thus far.

    As a legacy company staffed with pre-millenials (people who I see using caps lock rather than shift to type the uppercase characters in the password they still don't think they need) we are tied in to the mindset of local copies of office, but I'm slowly changing it. I worry about handing over control to faceless MS engineers working on best endeavours, but put simply, it's a financial decision I can't argue with; simple monthly subscription compared to the Capex of purchasing new hardware and sofware etc.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good article

      That's odd because I have looked at going cloudy and it costs.....and costs and costs and costs. True I have an investment in hardware and buying licenses, but instead of a cost per user (not device) that goes on for ever, I can amortize the cost over a significantly longer period. And hardware is cheap, of course it helps if you don't use overpriced and hardware heavy bloatware like Exchange for eMail.

      For example Office 2007 is perfectly adequate for 99.9% of users with Office, so it's already cost be about 10% of the cost of a subscription service to own those licenses for that time.

      Monthly subscriptions are "easy" but believe me if you add up the costs over 5 years, or 7 or 8, there's no contest, subscription is damn expensive and a cash drain especially for startups. And you get cash squeezed and can't pay briefly - bye bye service, and by-bye business as well.

      Cloud is popular because the vendors want the security of easy constant cashflow; it isn't intended to be less expensive for the users; in fact it is working exactly as intended in that it is typically more expensive for users.

      1. RudderLessIT

        Re: Good article

        "For example Office 2007 is perfectly adequate for 99.9% of users with Office, so it's already cost be about 10% of the cost of a subscription service to own those licenses for that time"

        You are dreaming

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Good article

          "You are dreaming"

          No he isn't. What feature do you need in 2010 which just isn't there in 2007? I'm not talking about stuff breaking because MSFT messes with the formats between versions to create a need to upgrade. I mean a thing which users all need to do which just doesn't exist in previous versions.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Good article

            At the end of the day, much of this is commodity software. Email, word processing, spreadsheets, file shares. It needs to exist, but there is no justification for companies paying millions of dollars... many tens of millions per year if you are a really large enterprise... for these basic software applications. You can argue that Outlook is better than Gmail, or you can argue that Gmail is much better than Outlook. I think a fair assessment would be that either will work just fine. That is why I think Google is going to do well. They are just dramatically less costly than MSFT and MSFT is holding on to a pricing level from a previous era when some of this software was cutting edge and they dominated the market. The price levels are long past due to fall substantially.

      2. Sampler

        Re: Good article

        Is that the same office 2007 that's now no longer supported (and something I raised at the company I just merged into).

    2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      "can't believe how bad..local sync with OneDrive..at the moment..solved in On-Demand, coming soon -

      And there we have "The Microsoft Way" in a nutshell.

      "This version is a bit s**t but trust us, the next one will be better"

      and maybe it will fix them. Or not (if not enough people b**ch about it)

      A SaaS looks much like software on a mainframe to some people with very good reason.

      Except historically MF operators didn't spy on your data for their own good.

      People bought personal computers in the first place to have their data under their control. It's going to take another generation to remind the current generation of what it feels like when your data is under someone else's control and you can't do a thing about it.

  4. stephanh

    if I'd start a new company

    ...I would use LibreOffice and set up an OwnCloud server for sharing documents. That way, I would save $$$ and keep control over my own data.

    But this is probably reactionary thinking.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: if I'd start a new company

      You're missing the whole point; you're not the one setting up the company, it's people who are making, doing or selling things that are. They don't want - and in some cases need - IT staff and are happy paying the little extra cash if it means they don't need to deal with geeks, particularly the sort who tell them they're doing it all wrong and send them down the trail of Libre Office if it means there's a chance that the spreadsheet they get from A N Outside Company doesn't just bloody well work like it should.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Re: "they don't need to deal with geeks"

        Sure, right up until their cloudy servers are down, they've Wanna-encrypted their own documents and nobody has a proper backup.

        Then they'll complain about how expensive proper support is.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "they don't need to deal with geeks"

          I'm not debating the rights and wrongs of it, just the realities. Most of them won't experience those catastrophes and, despite doing IT "all wrong", will manage just fine. Lots of companies have survived in this mode for years and many more will, the difference now being that they'll have far more professional IT, for similar cost, to the years when the boss was doing it in his spare time, or palming it off to his nephew who knows about computers...

          1. Triggerfish

            Re: "they don't need to deal with geeks"

            AC is right though. I have worked with SMEs for a few years, and generally speaking thats what happens, you may get them upgrading if the company grows and suddenly they have a few more office staff but until then something like 365 is perfect and for the most part works pretty well.

            You can complain they do not understand, and you are correct in the same way you may not understand what they do.

            It's also a cost thing, say for example you have someone running a small manufactory it has a dozen staff, most are on the shop floor, office wise you have the owner of the company and a office staff member that does everything else. Now lets say he has a few K to spare (unlikely), he could either go out and get a new overlocker for the shop floor, an essential bit of kit for his business and that brings in money, or some IT guy could come up and say, hey I'll convert you across to libre office and build you your own personal cloud give the money to me, yeah I know office 365 is costing you only £30 a month and is not causing any problems, but let me build you a server, set it up maintain it and so on.

            Hows that going to turn out?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: "they don't need to deal with geeks"

              Spot on Triggerfish; I work for a far larger manufacturing company and have had capex taken off me in recent years for various things that actually make the company money. Persuading the bosses - in particular, the ones in head office abroad - to spend money on servers they can't see, that don't obviously bring in revenue, is hard. Far easier to slip it under the radar in the form of operating expenses on a monthly basis, and for the most part, better for the company. Whilst I consider myself pretty leet with Exchange, am I really better than the guys that build out datacentres? With less tinkering to do onsite, I can focus on value-add to the firm; better for them, better for my career...

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: "they don't need to deal with geeks"

                This is often correct. Management are often very short-sighted on costs; it is easier to spend $50K over 5 years than $10K upfront once in 5 years. One is "expenses" and just gets paid, the other is capital and gets heavily scrutinized and held up for ages.

                The biggest driver I've seen in going to O365 is precisely this, bugger the costs (it goes up, usually way up, over time) but it saves arsing about with capital approvals.

              2. DonL

                Re: "they don't need to deal with geeks"

                "Persuading the bosses - in particular, the ones in head office abroad - to spend money on servers they can't see, that don't obviously bring in revenue, is hard. Far easier to slip it under the radar in the form of operating expenses on a monthly basis, and for the most part, better for the company."

                It's called leasing, and afterwards you get to keep them and they just keep on working without the monthly costs.

          2. bombastic bob Silver badge
            Linux

            Re: "they don't need to deal with geeks"

            I figure as a company owner, I can dictate policy. Then I set up the policy: Linux/BSD workstations, open/libre office, 'google docs' when shared things are needed (but only IF needed), local source repo, github for anything that's open source, and "the Windows machine" (running 7) if anything 'windows' must be used for some reason. And no web browsing from the windows machine. EVAR.

            then you purchase Linux versions of everything you need, or use open source versions, etc..

            and you hire people that agree with this policy.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "Then they'll complain about how expensive proper support is."

          Then they'll ofshore what little support remains to India to save a few squid.

          Who will the uses complain to then? Someone from India telling them to power cycle their PC (in an endless tape loop)

          Oh wait, users will use LibreOffice on a USB Key and backup everything on the QT locally, just like they did before because Orifice 36x is never available when they need it.

          Yes I'm a cynical BOF

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: if I'd start a new company

        "They don't want - and in some cases need - IT staff and are happy paying the little extra cash if it means they don't need to deal with geeks"

        Yeah, but that is why people should use Google. That's what, most, of the users want and use. I would be willing to walk into any company, no info before hand, and just say "Let's poll the users. If a majority have selected Gmail when they were free to choose anything, we'll use Gmail. If a majority have selected Outlook.com or Outlook thick client when they were free to choose whatever they think works best, then we'll use Outlook and pay more to get it. Let the users choose." I wouldn't be implementing very much Outlook. IT likes MSFT because they know it. The end users don't want any of that stuff. They want Apple and Google for the large part.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: if I'd start a new company

          "The end users don't want any of that stuff."

          End users overwhelmingly want Outlook. Especially power users.

      3. hplasm
        Gimp

        Re: if I'd start a new company

        "IT staff and are happy paying the little extra cash if it means they don't need to deal with geeks..."

        Your IT staff should BE geeks- or you deserve to be rinsed by MS and their Toy OS.

        Over and over, as usual, for every penny they can squeeze from your stupid fingers.

    2. TheVogon

      Re: if I'd start a new company

      "...I would use LibreOffice and set up an OwnCloud server for sharing documents. That way, I would save $$$ and keep control over my own data."

      Depends if you need to run business applications like macros, addins, etc. and to exchange documents with other companies, have centralised group policies, etc. If you are 1 man in a van Libre Office is probably mostly bearable. As soon as you need a proper enterprise grade solution the list of inadequacies is exceedingly large. Don't forget that licensing is usually only a small part of software TCO!

      1. Triggerfish

        Re: if I'd start a new company

        The operating expense thing is a good point, sometimes its better to have a monthly cash flow cost using office 365 written of as a service, than a big chunk going out on hardware. Been a while but once worked with a guy who ran a factory and was also a chartered accountant, he was always trying to reduce his monthly profit and write it off against costs, I could see him loving something like this as a monthly expense. (He considered himself an accountants accountant interpret that as you will).

        Have to say as well it does have some uses like freeing up time, I was a bit no don't put everything in the cloud etc but in general as long as you make sure that's not your only data storage and you back up like you should then it does free some time for people to play with tech a bit, and not worry as much about day to day admin duties, our lot certainly use that time to do stuff that we think will work for our company and it seems OK to me. We also have people who contract for us and its quite nice to be able to expand and contract as needed relatively simply and bill it against a project that used them.

        I still couldn't find myself wanting to really subscribe to something like a monthly office licence I'd rather just buy that software right out, but exchange online and the like has its uses.

    3. ad47uk

      Re: if I'd start a new company

      Depends on what the company is doing and how big it is and what market it is in. I know someone who runs a small business and they do not use any Microsoft software and that includes the OS as well. They use Apple Macs and Libre office. They have done ok so far.

      They do use Adobe software as well

      I also know of someone who also runs a small business and while they do use MS Office, they do not use office 365 or any online storage, they prefer to store stuff locally, a bit like myself really.

    4. Potemkine Silver badge

      Re: if I'd start a new company

      I am really disappointed with LO and its frequent freezes when doing simple things like copy and paste.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    1. Ralph B

      Indeed. TL;DR but I'm pretty sure that Betteridge's Law applies here.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "No."

        Do you work in our IT department?

  6. returnofthemus

    Yes!

    A 20-year head start and marginally less spyware, but I understand that they're working on it

  7. garrybrady

    Google Docs great until you need to communicate with other businesses

    I started my own business a few years back and used Google Docs. It was great and did all the things you need rather than than the vast feature sets of Office that noone typically uses.

    Then we started working more with other business who all use Office and had interop problems with file formats, especially folks with old PCs with old versions of Office. Nothing insurmountable but it was just adding a layer of extra hassle that was distracting me from my actual work.

    So then we moved to Office 365 Business Essentials which was only a bit more expensive than Google Docs for Business but was going to be worth it to make life easier. I thought that plan would be enough as I didn't want to shell out £11 per user just for basic email + Word and the business was still growing.

    However, over time I've discovered features that are just not present in web versions of Word like table of contents and track changes.... So MS have crippled it just enough to make it unusable in the real world and now I shell out £11 per user per month for what Google Docs did for a fraction of that all along...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Google Docs great until you need to communicate with other businesses

      I know it'll add extra admin, but aren't you on an MS plan that allows you install local copies of full-fat office to your PC? I'm paying less per month for the Business Premium version and that's one of the reasons I did it.

      1. garrybrady

        Re: Google Docs great until you need to communicate with other businesses

        That's the plan I've ended up on - Business Premium which is £9.40 + VAT = £11(ish)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Google Docs great until you need to communicate with other businesses

      Aye, we did a comparison of Googles business offering, and Microsoft's, and Google's was easily the better offering, it was also the cheaper offering, and had a better rated end user experience.

      We switched 2 years ago, and it's going very well indeed. I also explained to the boss the other day, when asked about cloud security, how given a secure cloud (Microsoft and Google both offer secure cloud with 2FA), you are actually MORE secure, as there aren't tens if not hundreds of uncontrolled emailed around copies of documents, there is just the 1 document, and real-time access control to that document. At that point he "got it".

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