Microsoft vs. Google Apps Round One

September 11, 2007

To bring you up to speed if you have not been following: Yesterday in a total PR move Microsoft publicly released a series of questions about Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE). Today Google has not officially responded, but it has made it’s way onto several Google related blogs. I agree with what most are saying, thatsome of the questions bring up reasonable points, but on the other hand there are some questions that I would give a big old ‘?’ to. The simple fact that Microsoft needs to pull this PR stunt means they are worried, and they might just have a good reason to be worried.

So lets take a stab and see if we can’t answer these questions for Mircosoft, after all I am a customer of Google Apps.

1. Microsoft asks: How many enterprise users does GAPE really have?

Do companies ever release statistics about things like this… really Microsoft? You want to pull this kind of stunt, why don’t you tell us how many Vista users you really have, and how many are holding out for the first service pack? No accounting tricks, just raw numbers that you are pulling from WGA that you swear is not spying on us. No? Didn’t think so.

2. Google often releases incomplete products to then issue incremental improvements without any official schedule – this is not what enterprise users want, says Microsoft.

Yes, Google was known for starting the whole “beta” trend, but they really have been getting better. The difference here Microsoft is Google is always improving their products instead of just walking away from them for a while, and releasing service packs over a year past the original release date because they are too busy failing to compete with Googles Adsense, or Apple’s iPod, or Nintendo’s Wii; OK the XBox 360 kicks ass… but the Zune? Really?

3. Microsoft argues Google says GAPE is a low cost office option, but if enterprises still need to support MS Office, they will then actually have additional costs and complexity.

Yup, that’s what happens when you have a Monopoly Microsoft, and I am fairly sure that this is what Google and others are trying to change. Additionally enterprises could always use Open Office on the desktop to “support” your MS Office. It’s not a pretty solution, but the Free price tag sure makes it attractive.

4. Google makes most of their revenue via ads, with other services only on the 1% fringe, says Microsoft, wondering if Google will shut down their office products line if it doesn’t generate the right revenue.

Google doesn’t seem to be hurting on ad sales, and Google also has services that users and enterprises pay for that are ad free.

5. Microsoft says Google Apps are mostly usable for non-power users and have less features than MS Office tools. Also, they mostly require the company to be always-online.

Didn’t you have to redesign Office this year because you did a study to find out what features users would like in MS Office, and the majority of people were coming back with features that were already built into MS Office but they just didn’t know how to use them or where they were? Yeah thought so… for most simple is better. Take a look at your Apple competitor for a lesson on this one.

6. Google Apps “don’t have essential document creation features like support for headers, footers, table of content, footnotes etc.”.

You are correct, they do not. If I were Google I would add this to the top of the list of features to incorporate.

7. MS says that Google defines a downtime for Gmail (for which they promise 99.9% uptime) as over 10 consecutive minutes of being unreachable. What, MS asks, if Google is down for 7 minutes every hour of a day?

Why don’t we wait for that to happen before we call it a problem? I have only seen Google down once, and I checked everything little cord on my Internet connection first because I couldn’t believe Google was actually down.

8. Google’s direct tech support has limited opening hours. MS writes, “… M-F 1AM-6PM PST – are these the new hours of global business?”

I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, Google’s thought process that computers are better than humans does not carry over well to technical support. People want to talk to humans, especially when they are footing the bill. Microsoft has much more experience in this department, but they are still not perfect. Ever called Microsoft technical support?

9. Microsoft writes that Google argues most people only use 10% of the features in today’s office products. Microsoft argues that however not everyone uses the same 10%.

Again, I kind of feel we have covered this. Google’s Office product is going to prioritize bring to market the features that it’s users want and need. Was MS Office built over night? Well it was acquired overnight, but you have put many years work into it. In a shorter amount of time Google has passed you on some things.. don’t be jealous.

10. As Google rolls out features on a constant basis, Microsoft says customers lose control of planning the update, and also aren’t able to sufficiently train their employees.

The key words in this sentence are “Google rolls out features”. And honestly can you really tell me that Microsoft customers have control of their update schedule? Why aren’t more enterprises adopting Vista? If you asked most customers, would they not tell you they are waiting for Vita to be stable which means a service pack? Did I not have to go back to XP because Vista did not support three monitors on two graphics cards, which XP has supported for years now?

So Microsoft, I hope this helps you out a little. It’s not an official Google response, but I am sure these and more are some of the thoughts going through the minds of those wicked smart Googler’s. Next time lets not call someone out publicly and act like your shit don’t stink.