News - Google aims to snag 90 per cent of Microsoft Office users

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Google Apps are gaining traction in businesses.

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Read more.

It is OK for low end tasks. I use it myself all the time but I'm a basic user.

However I've also supported it in the office where users put up spreadshessts with about 3500 columns and 2000 rows. Trying to do a filter and watching paint dry were very similar. A lot of user dissatisfaction ensued.

On the plus side, collaboration is great. Multiple people can work on the same document at the same time - very cool. No ribbon, no fat local install to crash. Infinite per change backups. Easy sharing wirh people outside your organization / firewall without the endless email hassle.

On the down. It can be very very very slow with big documemts. Requires a permananet connection. Doesn't play well at all in Internet Explorer, the old corporate standard. I've heard all this 'good enoough' from Linux free software types many times over the years. People only need to see one thing that doesn't work the way they want to go mental and yell at their IT department like spoiled children.

Does Google have a desktop app as well? If not, there simply is no comparison. There are things you can do with you local installation of Office that simply cannot be done with a browser based solution, at least not within a reasonable time frame.

If what they are doing is comparing Google's and Microsoft's online apps, then I can't really say which is better.

My experience of Chrome has been that it crashes a fair bit, so I'll give this a miss.

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Originally Posted by =assassin=

My experience of Chrome has been that it crashes a fair bit, so I'll give this a miss.

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huh, you're doing it wrong.

I have no basis for a view on whether Google will hit their 90% or not, but if they do, I'll be in the other 10%. I am not putting my office data online with Google, period. Not now, not ever.

And for that matter, I'm not putting it online with MS or anyone else, either.

My data is staying on my machines, under my control, and not under any circumstances whatever is a data vampire like Google getting their hands on it, because I simply do not trust them with it. Hell will freeze over and I'll go ice-skating with the demons first.

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Originally Posted by mark22

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Originally Posted by =assassin=

My experience of Chrome has been that it crashes a fair bit, so I'll give this a miss.

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huh, you're doing it wrong.

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Totally agree, I use Chrome near on exclusivity on PC, iOS and droid... never have an issues.... like..ever

I like chrome, but lets not forget that they had an issue the other day, when part of an auth server failed to fail over, bringing down chrome for lots of users of their sync'ing thing.

As a business having a dependency like that is kinda scary.

Also their online office apps are utter jizz. Mainly that...

Not to mention the data leaving your control issues, and legal minefeilds that can create.

So yes, google, aim at the stars, but don't believe me to expect it.

To be fair Microsoft Office always seems to have features you just don't need. Take Word for example. Who in their right mind would use 3D text and weird image borders? For the most part people just want a great autocorrect/spell check /grammar check from a word processor. Providing any App can supply those features then it would have a chance at being adopted by the masses.

I won't be in it. Bought Office 2007 back in early 2008 for <£40 and don't feel the need to upgrade. Anything I need access to is seamlessly connected through Dropbox, apart from sensitive documents which have to make do with portable storage and/or encryption. A subscription service would not be in my best interests, at $50/yr working out to £37.20 with today's exchange rate and VAT added on, it'd be practically equivalent to buying the thing each year. No thank you.

Hah they have no chance, but it makes for a good headline.

2 months ago my MD pulled me in and said he wanted to ditch Exchange, Office, Sharepoint and our iPhones, and move to google+android for all of it. He even went as far as bringing in a company to demo it to us...it was awful, simply awful.

Google docs/drive/mail are all great last resort toys. It's really useful to be able to open a spreadsheet in an internet cafe and be able to read it, even with formatting issues. It's great to be able to work on a document at the same time as someone else once a year when you need it. It's brilliant to be able to get to your email anywhere and never have to worry about backups.

It's not great to be unable to access your old emails when your internet goes down.
It's not great to be unable to read and use advanced spreadsheets when customers send them to you (or when you need to view/read them)
It's not great to be unable to view a word document with it's original formatting because google docs doesn't understand it.
It's not great to lose hours of work because google docs has decided to crash.

etc, etc.

Moving to a cloud based office solution is an excellent idea - but Google apps are just no-where near at the moment. Brilliant idea, but not implemetned well enough yet.

Office 365 (2013) is a MUCH better solution - although it does cost a bit more/year. You get all the cloud benefits that Google offer - including web versions of word/excel/outlook, the chat/communication/prescence (from Lync, which is simply awesome) etc - but you also get real desktop versions of all that software, or the ability to stream the desktop software if you really need that "use anywhere" functionality.

Even with a massive change in how you approach your work, I really cannot see how a company can switch 100% to using Google Apps without encoutering some massive problems and dealing with them day-to-day. I've no idea how Land Rover manage it (they are the only big name consistently pulled out as an example of a switcher) - must be a nightmare to work in any form of administrative role there (And I suspect that they do still use office or an equivalent for those important client facing documents ;) ) In my view it's the sort of thing you use as a tool to supplement your "main" toolset, and for that, it's great.

It's cheap for a reason ;)

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Originally Posted by Saracen

I have no basis for a view on whether Google will hit their 90% or not, but if they do, I'll be in the other 10%. I am not putting my office data online with Google, period. Not now, not ever.

And for that matter, I'm not putting it online with MS or anyone else, either.

My data is staying on my machines, under my control, and not under any circumstances whatever is a data vampire like Google getting their hands on it, because I simply do not trust them with it. Hell will freeze over and I'll go ice-skating with the demons first.

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cheaper to buy a 1tb hdd then to storr 1tb of data in the cloud. **** cloud service. seriously i hate it

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Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

cheaper to buy a 1tb hdd then to storr 1tb of data in the cloud. **** cloud service. seriously i hate it

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Agreed, but that's not the basis for my dislike. It's a couple of things, at least, for the most part. First, it introduces an obvious single point of vulnerability for my home office, that being, when my ISP drops my connection, which they do periodically, and sometimes for half a day at a time, it means I have no Office-type apps if they're reliant on any online service. That's not acceptable to me.

Second, confidentiality and basic privacy means I'm just not letting Google, or anyone else, do any data rummaging through my data, and I simply do not trust Google to not do exactly that. And there is nothing they can say, do or promise that will change my mind. The best way to keep as much privacy as possible is to simply not give them any more access to data than is absolutely necessary.

Third, for the above reasons, work that is commercially sensitive, or just very private or plain personal, is on a couple of machines that simply do not have any form of internet connection. Not wired, and emphatically not wifi. A lot of my stuff doesn't need net access, and relies on a small core of basic applicarions, including a venerable old copy of MS Office which, while WAY out of date, still does what I need of it.

So what do I need any apps from Google for? For me, and I grant other people's mileage may vary, online apps are all downside and no upside.