Five Reasons Google Docs Beats Office Live Workspace

So you've got the two biggest monopolies in the world battling it out in a SaaS environment. Who do you trust? All things being equal, Google given its experience protecting all things Web 2.0, including its massive search engine bsuiness. Microsoft says the Office Live Workspace files will have the benefit of "virus protection from Microsoft Forefront Client Security technology, and they can only be accessed with a Windows Live ID and password."

There's a lot at stake for businesses putting their documents and data at the Web, what VARs have got to ask themselves is who has more experience protecting a large data center hosted environment? For my money, the answer is Google.

5. Office Live Workspace Is Optmized For Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint Data. Google Is Optimized For Web 2.0.

So just what kind of surprises does Microsoft have in store when VARs try to upload Google Docs-created documents or Open Office documents? There is no way of telling right now just how Office Live Workspace will test in heterogenous environments with lots of Google Docs and Linux Open Office documents and data. But given Microsoft's history when it comes to developing software there are likely to be let's just say some issues related to using data from competitive Office suites.

Microsoft, by the way, is going out of its way to emphasize that Office Live Workspace will be "optimized" for all Office users from Office 97 to Office 2007 on Windows as well as Mac versions of Office. Optimizing for Office once again means that those VARs looking for that true Web 2.0 experience with no limitations are better served choosing Google Docs.

Mario Morejon contributed to this article