7 ms·

The model of natively cloud-hosted documents was Google's lead to loose, and I think they are losing it. O365 took the idea and ran. Yes, their web-based UI is

The model of natively cloud-hosted documents was Google's lead to loose, and I think they are losing it. O365 took the idea and ran. Yes, their web-based UI isn't as rich, but it has some decent collaboration, really good mobile apps and of course excellent desktop native apps. Google could have held their lead IMHO if they kept building out their Docs/Sheets to be closer to feature-parity with Word/Excel and started earlier on good mobile and desktop native apps (which don't even exist!) I love me some google docs for collaborative editing, but your right in the scaling of large docs in Word and Excel functionality.

TAForObvReasons 10y ago
Google docs has to become office in terms of feature parity faster than office online has to match google docs because the microsoft price point is comparable to the standalone. Microsoft can always push people to use the native word and excel apps for certain features because it's covered in the cost of the 365 sub, but google can't do the same because it's a separate cost.
- hackcrafter 10y ago
  Yea, I agree. I'm also amazed at how much suckage people are willing to put up with in O365, but still consider it a better choice than Google Docs for the company. Sharepoint is complete crap, and the off Sharepoint file syncer client is absurdly flaky, but there is a huge tolerance for that kind of thing. Or at least, it's not the biggest factor when considering making year+ commitments to one office suite or another. Price, familiarity and feature-richness are definitely in MS favor.
  - dleslie 10y ago
    Isn't OneDrive replacing SharePoint?
    - sithadmin 10y ago
      No. They don't really accomplish the same goals, and SharePoint Online is still a going concern. That said, just as Skype and Skype for Business are very different beasts under the hood, One Drive and One Drive for Business are also quite different, the latter being shoehorned on top of SharePoint.
      - toyg 10y ago
        OneDrive and Sharepoint are the worst part of O365. After the simplicity of Dropbox "one big drive in the cloud", it's a real pain to figure out how you're supposed to work with OD/SP - and good luck doing it without a dedicated fulltime SP admin.
      - jyrkesh 10y ago
        Not since they replaced the OneDrive for Business Client: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Transition-from-the-previous-OneDrive-for-Business-sync-client-4100df3a-0c96-464f-b0a8-c20de34da6fa https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Transition-from-the... AFAIK, it's all basically OneDrive under the hood now. Which is great because all the Groove/SharePoint based syncing was awful before.
    - hackcrafter 10y ago
      Maybe from a tech perspective, but the SharePoint "brand" is still heavily used in O365 enterprise for the same file-syncing stuff that OneDrive does in consumer-services. Which brings up another O365 nit, MS has these direct consumer services and O365 services all on different account silos such that when I log into O365 I have to go through a decision tree that answers two levels of questions about which _account_ my company email address is referring to: MS Personal vs Organization Issued vs Organization but Personally Created (not sure how the last category exists)
      - basch 10y ago
        it says at the bottom if you want to avoid the decision tree to rename your personal account. pick a second username and the problem goes away.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    SharePoint has been crap in the past, I'd agree with that, and Outlook is poor when it comes to HTML standards, but the rest of O365 seems solid to me. Other than SharePoint, what in particular do you see as weaknesses in the O365 lineup?
  - user5994461 10y ago
    > Sharepoint is complete crap, and the off Sharepoint file syncer client is absurdly flaky, but there is a huge tolerance for that kind of thing. With SharePoint I can share documents and directories with other people in my company. As much as I think SharePoint is "mediocre", Google Doc is just shit when it comes to sharing[1]. [1] The only sharing google doc does well is sending a link to ONE SINGLE DOCUMENT to a bunch of people by EMAIL ONLY.
    - foota 10y ago
      What's wrong with their sharing? I don't understand your comment in [1]
      - user5994461 10y ago
        With a sharepoint, there is a single place where everything is stored, the sharepoint. Everything there is accessible, visible and searchable (modulo access permissions). It's de-facto shared. --- With a Google Drive, all contents is private, only visible by you, only accessible by yourself. Other people can't access your stuff, people can't search your stuff, people can't even know what may or may not exist. If you want to share something, you have to email a link a single specific document of yours to selected people (who will each individually have to accept the invite). How do you keep track of what is shared? by who? to who? how do you share stuff to groups/teams/businessunit? Basically, google docs intuitively goes against everything you want to do in an entreprisey context.
        sowbug 10y ago
        It's easy to share a folder in Google Drive.
        tluyben2 10y ago
        Everything you say also goes for Drive... Not sure what you mean?
        timdierks 10y ago
        You can share folders; also, check out Team Drive. https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/21/google-opens-up-its-new-product-for-business-file-sharing-team-drives-to-early-adopters/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/21/google-opens-up-its-new-pr...
- nashashmi 10y ago
  And here is the dilemma with competing with Microsoft: Compete with Microsoft and forever spend your time with bug fixes, parity issues, and new features the other guy implements. ... OR create enough of the part that essentially means productivity app, but then branch out into your own space and create a product that differentiates itself and creates lock-in. Google knows that doing the latter is like a dog forever chasing fox and never winning, so it eventually called timoeut on parity and branched off into doing something new and exciting.
  - AlphaSite 10y ago
    What has google done which O365 isn't doing equally well? Google Docs just isn't very great.
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      Your may have been downvoted, but it's true. I work for a company that drank the Google coolaid and it was a dreadful decision. Virtually no one uses Google Docs or Sheets. Instead, they struggle on without it, or have their department purchase an incredibly expensive version of Office. The Google experiment has failed in our organisation. Google Groups and Gmail is a bit of a disaster. Google can't even do basic things, like relabel all email older than a certain date. And the admin interface is ridiculously slow, and frankly buggy. One time, I logged into this frequently used interface and discovered that I got prompted with a post it note every freaking time. That might not seem like much, but it slowed me down and we are under the pump at the moment. Overall, Google has such great ideas but is totally let down by an utter lack of polish and a total inability to improve their UX, and ensure that they finish off features and products. So much potential let down by incredibly simple UX errors. It's unbelievably disappointing :(
      - douche 10y ago
        The thing about Google Docs is, it looks and has the same functionality now as it did circa ten years ago when I first remember using it. I'm not sure what that department in the Googleplex is occupying their time with.
macspoofing 10y ago
>The model of natively cloud-hosted documents was Google's lead to loose, and I think they are losing it. Did they ever have it? Did they ever care about it? Google Docs languished for such a long time and Google never made a real push into the Enterprise.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  I think they did care, but they just assumed that the same model which worked in the consumer space (enthusiasm among tech-literate people which then spreads to other people by word-of-mouth, but no support whatsoever) would work for enterprise sales. In their defense, it sometimes does (like for Slack), but it's a different ballgame when you're competing directly against Microsoft and their well-established sales channels.
- Gravityloss 10y ago
  Office 365 in term of collaborative text document editing is still behind google docs circa 2008. But I haven't noticed any improvements to google docs since the early days. You can't create templates, you can't upload fonts, a million other things that make it not really usable in a professional setting for external communication.
andrewbinstock 10y ago
>The model of natively cloud-hosted documents was Google's lead to loose, and I think they are losing it. No, Google was never going to own the market segment once MS got into it seriously. Google could only mark time until that event.

TAForObvReasons 10y ago

Google docs has to become office in terms of feature parity faster than office online has to match google docs because the microsoft price point is comparable to the standalone. Microsoft can always push people to use the native word and excel apps for certain features because it's covered in the cost of the 365 sub, but google can't do the same because it's a separate cost.

hackcrafter 10y ago
Yea, I agree. I'm also amazed at how much suckage people are willing to put up with in O365, but still consider it a better choice than Google Docs for the company. Sharepoint is complete crap, and the off Sharepoint file syncer client is absurdly flaky, but there is a huge tolerance for that kind of thing. Or at least, it's not the biggest factor when considering making year+ commitments to one office suite or another. Price, familiarity and feature-richness are definitely in MS favor.
- dleslie 10y ago
  Isn't OneDrive replacing SharePoint?
  - sithadmin 10y ago
    No. They don't really accomplish the same goals, and SharePoint Online is still a going concern. That said, just as Skype and Skype for Business are very different beasts under the hood, One Drive and One Drive for Business are also quite different, the latter being shoehorned on top of SharePoint.
    - toyg 10y ago
      OneDrive and Sharepoint are the worst part of O365. After the simplicity of Dropbox "one big drive in the cloud", it's a real pain to figure out how you're supposed to work with OD/SP - and good luck doing it without a dedicated fulltime SP admin.
    - jyrkesh 10y ago
      Not since they replaced the OneDrive for Business Client: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Transition-from-the-previous-OneDrive-for-Business-sync-client-4100df3a-0c96-464f-b0a8-c20de34da6fa https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Transition-from-the... AFAIK, it's all basically OneDrive under the hood now. Which is great because all the Groove/SharePoint based syncing was awful before.
  - hackcrafter 10y ago
    Maybe from a tech perspective, but the SharePoint "brand" is still heavily used in O365 enterprise for the same file-syncing stuff that OneDrive does in consumer-services. Which brings up another O365 nit, MS has these direct consumer services and O365 services all on different account silos such that when I log into O365 I have to go through a decision tree that answers two levels of questions about which _account_ my company email address is referring to: MS Personal vs Organization Issued vs Organization but Personally Created (not sure how the last category exists)
    - basch 10y ago
      it says at the bottom if you want to avoid the decision tree to rename your personal account. pick a second username and the problem goes away.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  SharePoint has been crap in the past, I'd agree with that, and Outlook is poor when it comes to HTML standards, but the rest of O365 seems solid to me. Other than SharePoint, what in particular do you see as weaknesses in the O365 lineup?
- user5994461 10y ago
  > Sharepoint is complete crap, and the off Sharepoint file syncer client is absurdly flaky, but there is a huge tolerance for that kind of thing. With SharePoint I can share documents and directories with other people in my company. As much as I think SharePoint is "mediocre", Google Doc is just shit when it comes to sharing[1]. [1] The only sharing google doc does well is sending a link to ONE SINGLE DOCUMENT to a bunch of people by EMAIL ONLY.
  - foota 10y ago
    What's wrong with their sharing? I don't understand your comment in [1]
    - user5994461 10y ago
      With a sharepoint, there is a single place where everything is stored, the sharepoint. Everything there is accessible, visible and searchable (modulo access permissions). It's de-facto shared. --- With a Google Drive, all contents is private, only visible by you, only accessible by yourself. Other people can't access your stuff, people can't search your stuff, people can't even know what may or may not exist. If you want to share something, you have to email a link a single specific document of yours to selected people (who will each individually have to accept the invite). How do you keep track of what is shared? by who? to who? how do you share stuff to groups/teams/businessunit? Basically, google docs intuitively goes against everything you want to do in an entreprisey context.
      - sowbug 10y ago
        It's easy to share a folder in Google Drive.
      - tluyben2 10y ago
        Everything you say also goes for Drive... Not sure what you mean?
      - timdierks 10y ago
        You can share folders; also, check out Team Drive. https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/21/google-opens-up-its-new-product-for-business-file-sharing-team-drives-to-early-adopters/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/21/google-opens-up-its-new-pr...
nashashmi 10y ago
And here is the dilemma with competing with Microsoft: Compete with Microsoft and forever spend your time with bug fixes, parity issues, and new features the other guy implements. ... OR create enough of the part that essentially means productivity app, but then branch out into your own space and create a product that differentiates itself and creates lock-in. Google knows that doing the latter is like a dog forever chasing fox and never winning, so it eventually called timoeut on parity and branched off into doing something new and exciting.
- AlphaSite 10y ago
  What has google done which O365 isn't doing equally well? Google Docs just isn't very great.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    Your may have been downvoted, but it's true. I work for a company that drank the Google coolaid and it was a dreadful decision. Virtually no one uses Google Docs or Sheets. Instead, they struggle on without it, or have their department purchase an incredibly expensive version of Office. The Google experiment has failed in our organisation. Google Groups and Gmail is a bit of a disaster. Google can't even do basic things, like relabel all email older than a certain date. And the admin interface is ridiculously slow, and frankly buggy. One time, I logged into this frequently used interface and discovered that I got prompted with a post it note every freaking time. That might not seem like much, but it slowed me down and we are under the pump at the moment. Overall, Google has such great ideas but is totally let down by an utter lack of polish and a total inability to improve their UX, and ensure that they finish off features and products. So much potential let down by incredibly simple UX errors. It's unbelievably disappointing :(
    - douche 10y ago
      The thing about Google Docs is, it looks and has the same functionality now as it did circa ten years ago when I first remember using it. I'm not sure what that department in the Googleplex is occupying their time with.

macspoofing 10y ago

>The model of natively cloud-hosted documents was Google's lead to loose, and I think they are losing it. Did they ever have it? Did they ever care about it? Google Docs languished for such a long time and Google never made a real push into the Enterprise.

Analemma_ 10y ago
I think they did care, but they just assumed that the same model which worked in the consumer space (enthusiasm among tech-literate people which then spreads to other people by word-of-mouth, but no support whatsoever) would work for enterprise sales. In their defense, it sometimes does (like for Slack), but it's a different ballgame when you're competing directly against Microsoft and their well-established sales channels.
Gravityloss 10y ago
Office 365 in term of collaborative text document editing is still behind google docs circa 2008. But I haven't noticed any improvements to google docs since the early days. You can't create templates, you can't upload fonts, a million other things that make it not really usable in a professional setting for external communication.

andrewbinstock 10y ago

>The model of natively cloud-hosted documents was Google's lead to loose, and I think they are losing it. No, Google was never going to own the market segment once MS got into it seriously. Google could only mark time until that event.