Microsoft Office Web Apps Vs. Google Docs

Page 1 of 2

The Microsoft vs. Google competition of late has really gone to new levels. Each company is fighting for dominance on some very specific turf. Take, for instance, the unabashed threat Google has imposed on that long-held Microsoft mainstay, the productivity suite. It's no secret that most of the world's businesses use Microsoft Office as the preferred office productivity software. Yet, Google's cloud-based productivity offerings, Google Docs and the more business-oriented Google Apps, have been gaining at an adoption rate that must be somewhat troubling to Microsoft.

Although it's hard to come by cold, hard numbers on the amount of those using Google Docs or Apps, research firm IDC reported in July of this year that of companies surveyed, Google Docs was being "widely used" by 19.5 percent.

Although this is a tiny fraction in comparison to the number of Microsoft Office users, considering that Google Docs and Apps officially came out of beta this year that adoption rate must give some Microsoft executives pause.

Of course, it hasn't been all smooth sailing for Google. In March of this year, Google Docs suffered a publicity black eye after a reported security breach. Google sent a notice out to Google Docs users that it may have inadvertently shared some users' documents with contacts who were never granted access.

There has also been growing concern about the security and reliability of the cloud-based world in which both Google Docs and Apps reside. Recent incidents of Distributed Denial-of-Service, or DDoS, attacks have brought sites' other cloud-based platforms like Twitter and Facebook to standstills, albeit temporary ones. Even Google's mail service, Gmail, has had extended outages. Back in September, tens of millions of Gmail users were unable to access Gmail for about 100 minutes. The outage occurred after Google took some servers offline for routing maintenance and remaining routers just sort of died after becoming overloaded by network traffic.

Yet, in the face of that adversity Google Apps and Google Docs have persevered. The battle for market share is becoming particularly interesting since Microsoft is slated to release Office 2010 this year. Add to the mix Microsoft's foray into productivity suites with the release of Office Web Apps and things really start to heat up.

Microsoft's Office Web Apps is part of a new campaign Microsoft is pushing to deliver "the best productivity suite across the PC, phone and browser." This is the launching of a new, re-engineered Microsoft ecosystem, which includes Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 and yes, Office Web Apps.

Office Web Apps from what we have reviewed does deliver the high-fidelity user experience of Office via a browser, as Microsoft has promised. The interface is pretty much the same as in the client version of Office, and latency issues or any other performance issues were not apparent during our review.

To review Microsoft Office Web, CRN reviewers had to log into Windows Live SkyDrive, using a Windows Live account. It's as simple a process as signing up and logging into a Google account to use Google Docs.

Office Web Apps are available free with a Windows Live account. Office Web Apps are online companions to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, giving users the ability to access, edit and share Microsoft Office documents from virtually anywhere on a PC, mobile phone and Web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari). Note: OneNote Web App will be available at a later date.

Microsoft sent reviewers a list of known issues with the Technical Preview of Office Web Apps. One of the issues that did plague us was the multiple authentication requests for our Windows Live ID credentials. This issue affects those using Office Web Apps and who are running Office 2003 or Office 2007. Microsoft's suggestion to install the Windows Live Sign-In Assistant did seem to help things along a bit. At any rate, Microsoft plans to address this issue in a few weeks.

For those of us taking the Technical Preview for a test-drive, a natural question that may arise is what happens to any data that is stored in Office Web Apps during the Technical Preview phase? Microsoft's answer: Open up your client version of Office and save those files locally. Since Microsoft will be continuously updating and modifying the Office Web App services, there is a chance that changes will be made which could result in loss of data from one version to the next. However, at the end of the Technical Preview, files will still reside on SkyDrive and users will still have access to Office Web Apps.

Microsoft's Office Web Apps has one big advantage over other cloud-based productivity suites: The interface is almost identical to Office 2007 and 2010. That means that users who may not have much experience with computing in the clouds should feel right at home using Office Web Apps.

It also is in no way an upgrade to Office Live Workspace. Office Web Apps is a true cloud-based productivity suite. Live Workspace was more of a Web-based plug-in for Office that provided some storage and collaboration features and still required a local install of the Office Suite to use it.

Office Web Apps is a good offering that enhances the Office ecosystem, which includes OneNote and SharePoint. It provides excellent collaboration features and you can get done pretty much everything in Office Web Apps that you could do with the thick Office version. There are still some features that seem to be not as robust when compared to Google Docs but there are others that are better than Google's offering.

Keeping in mind that Microsoft Office Web Apps is still in Technical Preview, here's a look at various features of Office Web Apps vs. Google Docs:

1 | 2 | Next >>

Tweet

   

More Applications & OS