Microsoft Office Web Apps Vs. Google Docs
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: Interoperability
In the Technical Preview, it is possible to upload files other than Microsoft Office docs. You just can't view or edit them within Office Web Apps. Perhaps this is something Microsoft will address in the final release, but that's highly unlikely. Google Apps provides greater document interoperability; users can upload, view and edit Microsoft Office documents, StarOffice, HTML files, .ODT, .CSV, .ODS and PDF files. The argument for Microsoft, of course, is that Microsoft makes a proprietary document format, so why should it support other formats? Yet, isn't interoperability a large part of collaboration?
Multibrowser Support
Microsoft is being flexible in this area. Office Web Apps is supported on Firefox and Safari in addition to Internet Explorer. From our review, Office Web Apps works well in all three browsers; there is no user experience loss when using a non-IE browser. Google Docs extends that support to all three browsers as well and to Google Chrome, naturally.
Collaboration
Microsoft Office Web Apps uses top-level permission in its folder hierarchy. When a user is granted top-level permissions, those permissions trickle down to subfolders. You can't assign explicit permissions to subfolders. Businesses can really expand collaboration options by incorporating SharePoint Server 2010.
Google Docs has just made available folder sharing. It was rather puzzling why it took until October of this year for Google to get on the ball with this much-demanded feature. To share a folder in Google Docs, user must select it and then click on the "Share This Folder" drop-down command at the top of the window listing items inside the folder. Users can invite other users to share, or can send the folder as a link via e-mail or IM. Once a folder is shared, it gets marked with a little icon of a person.
Now, as to unsharing in Google Docs, there is no apparent direct command to do so; it seems the only way to remove access for each user you no longer want to share with is by setting their permissions to "None." This could be a bit inconvenient if you have a lot of users assigned to a folder you want to unshare.
To unshare in Office Web Apps, there is a link to "Edit Permissions" with shared files and folders. Users can select "Clear These Settings" to remove all permissions, or can select which users to remove sharing privileges with.
There's also not a lot flexibility with subfolders. Once you share a folder, those permissions are pushed down to all subfolders so users have to be diligent. Once a top-level folder is shared, all of the data contained in that folder is shared.
Under the "Folders" menu item, Google Docs lists all folders that others share with you.
Google Docs folder sharing is pretty rudimentary. Microsoft has a slight advantage in this area due to the robust sharing options that a SharePoint/Office platform can provide, yet the caveat is that an organization would need SharePoint and SharePoint 2010 at that, to take full benefit of all features.
Word Web App Vs. Document
Although there was not much to review since the Technical Preview does not contain the Word editing (it will be available in the beta release) it's safe to say that Microsoft Word is the standard when it comes to other word processing software, even in the cloud. Google Docs' counterpart, Document, is just getting up to speed by incorporating features that have already been in Word: language translation, enhanced "Find and Replace" and Print Preview.
Excel Web App Vs. Spreadsheet
Though not as robust as the Office thick client Excel, users can change data, enter or edit formulas and apply basic formatting within spreadsheets. Surprisingly, there seems to be no ready way to create charts. Chart creation is a feature within Google Spreadsheet. Users of Excel Web App can collaborate on a workbook at the same time.
PowerPoint Web App Vs. Presentation
As is this case with the Excel Web App, the PowerPoint Web App seems to be more about editing and collaborating on presentations that have been created in the Office thick client. You can't, for example, add backgrounds or animation to slides, at least not in the Technical Preview. Google Docs Presentation is also quite feature-thin, but you can at least apply themes and backgrounds. In PowerPoint Web App, users can quickly add slides to existing presentations, create new ones or add pictures, Smart Art or links.
OneNote Web App
This Office Web Apps feature was also not available in the Technical Preview. OneNote lets users create notebooks and share and sync notes with others.
Office Web Apps is true cloud-based productivity, but it is still an enhancement to rather than an alternative to traditional Microsoft Office. Corporate users who have Office deeply entrenched into their work environments will find many benefits to incorporating Office Web Apps. For users and organizations looking to completely free themselves from the shackles of local HDD-based applications, Microsoft Office Web Apps may be a tough sell against Google Docs or Google Apps.
The Bottom Line
The full-blown local client version of Microsoft Office continues to be the barometer against which all other productivity suites are judged. However, Office Web Apps, in its Technical Preview form, still is dependent on a full, localized version of Microsoft Office for full functionality. Now, that may not necessarily be a bad thing. In all fairness, Microsoft has not suggested Office Web Apps is by any means intended to be a replacement for the local Office suite. Still, if users can do just as much with Microsoft Office documents in Google Docs, then what becomes the lure for using Office Web Apps?
On the other hand, users, especially business users, are still wary about giving up their data completely to the cloud. However, if a business is looking to move to a real, cloud-based productivity suite, then Google Apps offers far more functionality that Office Web Apps.
The question is, though, who's willing to go that route?
Get involved and voice your opinion on all things technical. E-mail Samara Lynn at [email protected]