Google Docs vs Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft’s decision to launch Office 365 a few days ago represented the company’s effort to get a slice of the enterprise cloud computing pie. But for executives and travelling business folk, it meant something simpler - the option to use the popular MS Office suite (MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint) from any computer, using what the software giant calls its Office Web Apps.

Here, however, it faces some very stiff competition from Google Docs, which has pretty much been the go-to application for anybody wanting to work on a productivity suite online.

We took both Google Docs and the office suite portion of Office 365 for a short swing online and here is what we found out


To start using
All you need to do to get into Google Docs is have a Google account, signing up for which is easy. With Office 365 -- being a more professional affair - the whole process takes a bit longer. So, if you are the type who gets intimidated by being referred to as The Admin, well, just keep that upper lip stiff.

You will be able to get to your online MS office suite after a few clicks and drawn-out registration process (nope, your Windows Live sign-in will not work). Once that is done, things are a lot simpler, but we really wish there was a way by which one could simply sign up for the office suite part of Office 365.

Indeed, Google Docs takes this one by a mile.

Looks and ease of use
We have been huge fans of Google Docs ever since it was launched, but we must confess that Office 365 makes it look plain mousy in comparison.

The famous ribbon interface is there, the icons are more colourful and sharp. Yes, this is as close as it gets to the real McCoy on the desktop.

Perhaps it is the familiarity with Microsoft’s icons, toolbars and menus, but the very stark fact is that we were able to get up, up and away with Office 365’s suite in far lesser time than we ever did with Google Docs. Microsoft scores.

Features
Scratch the boring surface and you will see that Google Docs lets you do a lot more on the Web than Office 365 does. Yes, you cannot do stuff like tracking edit changes in the Word web app, or add animations and transitions in the Web avatar of PowerPoint.

However, Microsoft has more bells and whistles - you get better templates for each of the applications on Microsoft's versions. You can also move smoothly from the document on Office 365 to MS Office on your computer for more intense editing, but honestly, that kind of defeats the purpose of the cloud.

Here, both services even out.
Compatibility with MS Office formats
In spite of the efforts of all other office productivity suites, the fact is that almost everyone uses MS Office formats when it comes to saving documents, spreadsheets and files. Indeed, Google Docs does tend to miss out some of the formatting in MS Office documents uploaded to it, especially with .docx format files.

In our case, we found the colours missing from some of our columns and our more colourful bullets replaced by dull, vanilla ones.

Needless to say, the Office 365 Web apps reproduced all MS Office files very faithfully, down to the last shaded font.
Collaboration
Google Docs comes into its own in the field of collaboration. Sharing documents and working on the same document in real time is so much easier in this suite. The same can be done in Office 365 too, but you would need to create a Team Site, which is accessible to people you choose.

Yes, it is more powerful and looks more corporate than Google’s relatively plain affair, but if you are a small group that wants nothing more than simple collaboration, Google Docs is so much better.
Performance
That ribbon interface and those lovely icons come at the price of bandwidth. We consistently found Google Docs loading and saving files much faster than the Web versions of MS Office. And this was over a 2Mbps connection. Those with a slower connection or using data cards are going to struggle with Office 365’s Web apps.

We also encountered a few problems while logging into the Office 365 service - something that almost never happens with Google Docs - and there was more than the odd “encountered an unexpected error” messages on Microsoft’s cloud office suite, which tended to crash the app.
Price

This is where Google Docs really delivers a blow to Office 365. While Microsoft supporters will argue (with good reason) that their offering be compared with that of Google’s commercial one, for us, there is no getting around the fact that Google Docs can be used for free.

Office 365 comes with a price tag starting from $6 per month, per user (although it also has a free 30-day trial period).

(Note: Unlike the ‘free’ Google Docs that can be accessed by anyone with a Google account, Office365 is targeted at enterprise customers. The Microsoft package-besides the Office Web Apps that we have mentioned here-includes other products such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online.)