Google Apps vs Microsoft Office 365: A Buyer's Guide

Looking for online collaboration but not sure how to get it? This buyer’s guide reviews the major elements of the two leading cloud productivity suites, Microsoft Office 365 for small business and Google Apps.

First it is necessary to understand that Google and Microsoft have approached cloud productivity suites in a fundamentally different way. Microsoft intends for the cloud to be an extension of its desktop productivity suite, Microsoft Office. Google sees its cloud suite, Google Apps, as a replacement for desktop software such as Microsoft Office.

The difference in approach makes it difficult for businesses to know which suite is right for them. In addition to the review below, this Review by Scenarios chart lists likely scenarios and the best suite for each.

Given that most businesses will be familiar with the features of Microsoft Office, which has been reviewed many times, this buyer's guide will focus on a comparison of the cloud components of the two productivity suites first. Where possible the buyer's guide includes a comparison with Microsoft Office on the desktop as well, but it is safe to assume that in all cases the desktop versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint are much more heavily featured than either Google Apps or their cloud-based equivalents, Microsoft Office Web Apps.

Standard suite
It was always going to be an uphill battle for Google when it chose to take on the king of productivity. The first version of Microsoft Office was released 21 years ago, and its individual applications are household names.

It is surprising then that, in terms of functionality, Google Apps is well ahead of Microsoft Office Web Apps (as they are called in Office 365) on many fronts. Basic features such as find and replace are missing, for example, which are indispensable for editing large Word and Excel documents.

But when Microsoft Office Web Apps is used in combination with the latest version of Word on the desktop (which must be bought separately), it’s a killer combination.

Below is a comparison of the main differences between Microsoft Office Web Apps (OWA) and their Google Apps counterparts.

Word processing: Microsoft Word Web App vs Google Docs

Both programs have so few features that most of what you can do appears under the main menu.

Features that appear in both suites include style presets for headings and paragraphs (Microsoft has 22 options to Google’s six), the standard font styles (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, highlight, super and subscript), paragraph styles (bulleting, numbered lists; justified left, right and centre; indenting), font size and type (Microsoft has 27 fonts, Google 19); embedding pictures, links and (basic) tables.

Some common features operate in different ways. Both suites can insert images into documents but source them from different locations. Clip art in Word Web App is sourced from Microsoft and online photo libraries such as Fotolia.com, iClipArt.com and iStockphoto.com. It’s unclear how many images Microsoft has available in the royalty-free library.

Google uses Google Image Search to bring up all photos available “for commercial use with modification”, as well as a separate search across Google Picasa web albums.

It’s important to note that Microsoft sees Word Web App as “best suited for quick changes” rather than a full word processor. Microsoft encourages users looking for the “full set of Word capabilities” to open web documents in the desktop version of Word, which is a seamless, one-click process.
Word Web App’s edit screen doesn’t display all formatting either, so some changes might not be possible to make.

If you were to use a cloud productivity suite alone without a desktop client, Google Docs has a significant edge over Microsoft Web App.  

Cloud v cloud comparison: 10 reasons why Google Docs is better than Microsoft Word Web App
Cloud v desktop comparison: 10 reasons why Microsoft Word is better than Google Docs

Next page: The battle of the spreadsheets