[gyffesgyffeshcr8]

And I love how people feel the need to protect a company.. like Apple or MS or Google CARE that their product's been unfavorably reviewed by XXX and they need to spare these giants' feelings by leaping to their defense. HA.

Office365 is half-baked crap MS is shoveling out in a desperate attempt to join "the Cloud", increase revenue (through renewable licenses) and fight piracy at the same time by killing its desktop installs. Google Apps has been available longer: small wonder if it's better.

Not stop bloviating in defense of a company that could care less and go read some other site: perhaps Fox has some bit of "news" that you can bleat about.

[IanRayvzuo]

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Office365 is half-baked crap MS is shoveling out in a desperate attempt to join "the Cloud", increase revenue (through renewable licenses) and fight piracy at the same time by killing its desktop installs. Google Apps has been available longer: small wonder if it's better.

In defense of the whole comparison, I think it is worthwhile to compare the two suites based on available features. Due to the nature of cloud software, this has to be done regularly to be of any meaning as a review from 2011 is not very useful today. One thing about these reviews that is less informative is the lack of reviews for Zoho and Hyperoffice which are also both good suites among others like IBM. I understand there simply isn't time to compare everything.

The part that is less useful about commentary is when people deem a product superior for reasons that likely are not relevant to a straight comparison. Implementation issues have been discussed which is a different subject and not really about the product (or any product) as much as the people managing it. The size of various agencies adopting products is talked about below (and everywhere that makes this particular comparison) which I find less than useful for a general audience.

I very much like the straight comparison of web app to web app instead of comparing Office 2013+Office 365+Windows Server 2012 to web app. One is not really "cloud."

And yes, I think this article gives Excel Web App too much credit for its current incarnation. I have tried both extensively and while I like desktop Excel fine, the Excel Web App seems like it needs more work. The flashy animation moving between cells is nice and all, but I would rather have no animation and
more basic features. I would like to think most people using these tools for anything other than importing existing documents created with desktop software would like more features and less flash.

[sundance]

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I would prefer to use Google Apps. I have moved to google docs last year and I am happy with it. It gives me flexibility to use it anywhere and I like that. Microsoft is running out of innovative technologies What is so "innovative" about Google Docs?? Google Apps is just a "dumbed down" version of Office 365. As I mentioned, the state of Texas just picked Office 365 over Google Apps. So did the State of California, the City of Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Minnesota -- all these major cities picked Office 365 over Google Apps. The only major city to use Google Apps -- Los Angeles -- is currently asking for a REFUND from Google for non-performance of contractual obligations. How EMBARRASSING is that??? http://betanews.com/...or-google-apps/

[sundance]

Whats so innovative? Basically, everything about google apps is. Lets see. Its been around for a few years now. Its the first major word processor/spreadsheet cloud based program. Microsoft is no god of the processing world. They merely purchased their original word processor from a different company. The only reason anyone has bothered with Office is that its basically the only text editor out there with features. And its not like others haven't tried. Who knew google would be the ones to compete with them.

Microsoft is just slow to catch up to everyone else as usual. While it was nice of them to include Office with XP, a large group of people never moved past it. Not that there was any reason for them to. However, microsoft has not been innovative at all with Office or any of its applications. It has only tried to position itself so that people are stuck purchasing it over and over. Wanna get a new computer with office? You couldn't unless you had an extra key from the previous purchase. Now, they see the cloud as an opportunity for them to make even more money. Their new retail version of Office 2013 is even more restrictive than previous versions. Again, there putting themselves in a position where they hope the customer will default to office 365 and paying a never ending subscription.

For the average person, google docs (not apps) is the better way to go. The average person just needs a workable text editor. The free version of google apps (which has almost all the same applications with less storage size) already has more than enough features for most people. Admittedly, excel and spreadsheets is most likely better with Microsoft. However, it doesn't seem like the average guy uses spreadsheets that much or excel. A lot of small businesses are using google apps and I think google will improve their spreadsheets in the future. Not to mention, even googles paid service is cheaper than Microsoft.

[slamdunk]

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I would prefer to use Google Apps. I have moved to google docs last year and I am happy with it. It gives me flexibility to use it anywhere and I like that. Microsoft is running out of innovative technologies What is so "innovative" about Google Docs?? Google Apps is just a "dumbed down" version of Office 365. As I mentioned, the state of Texas just picked Office 365 over Google Apps. So did the State of California, the City of Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Minnesota -- all these major cities picked Office 365 over Google Apps. The only major city to use Google Apps -- Los Angeles -- is currently asking for a REFUND from Google for non-performance of contractual obligations. How EMBARRASSING is that??? http://betanews.com/...or-google-apps/

Well gee, if a bankrupt stupid State like CA (and their cities) that can't manage their own basic financial affairs picks Office 365 then I should do the same thing?

Thanks for the insight.

Too much sheep mentality going on around here.

People need to decide individually what their own needs are and stop spending too much on crap they don't need.

The vast majority of people don't use a fraction of the features on any of this software yet they have it drummed into their heads they should buy it.

[Trebuchette]

They'll never sell me on either. But Google is an ad company first and foremost, with the desire to be an "identity service" (primarily to serve up ads). I use GMail alright: to log in to other sites and allow Google to collect the resulting spam. I have several GMails, in fact, none of which connects to my "real" email. I have no desire for Google's "free" services. I nearly settled on Androids until Google put ads in the maps during an overnight update, and I tapped the blended-in ad when trying to zoom and got dropped out of Nav and into phone, dialing some nearby business. During rush hour. In a strange city. I got to my hotel and ridded my phone of GMaps, tried several others (a HUGE waste of time, btw), and finally found Waze. (I was about to go back to Garmin!) I complained, and was told there'd be NO paid version of GMaps because Google makes more money serving up ads.

If you have ANY doubt that Google won't start serving up ads based on your documents, business or otherwise, I'm sorry for you. Protect your identity; Google's services are NOT free; they're a lure to get your identity and serve you ads. PERIOD.

As for MS 365 or whatever, no interest in that, either. I do like SkyDrive, but of course my protected documents (half the documents) aren't available via SkyDrive. Therefore, good old-fashioned "desktop" apps, and maybe Dropbox after encryption, will continue to be our solution. SkyDrive plus the dinky apps we'll see for Win 8 ought to be fine for non-sensitive documents; otherwise, laptops + encrypted files over a secure network will be our solution.

If MS fails to provide desktop in the future, we'll switch to Open Office, or another solution, even if that means migrating en masse to a Linux distro. But one thing we will NOT do is use an ad company's "free" office apps.