Google revolutionised the world when it introduced Gmail in 2004 as users were able to have a stable email address without having to spend any money to acquire it. What then followed, three years later was a range of Google Apps – in other words, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator – which were branded under the umbrella of “Google Apps for Your Domain”.
This set of apps was rebranded as “G Suite” in 2016. Today, the main G Suite tools include Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Calendar, Google+, Sites, Hangouts, and Keep. Through G Suite Marketplace, you are able to install third-party apps onto your account that you can use with your primary G Suite Apps.
There has been a long-standing feud between champions of Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google’s G Suite. Proponents of Microsoft warn people off Google as they feel that the search engine giant freely distributes their users’ information to third parties even though G Suite users are extremely happy with the product and praise its user-friendliness.
So, the question has to be asked: Which product is superior to the other? Is one product ACTUALLY superior to the other?
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Microsoft Office 365
According to Silverbug, an B2B IT Solutions and Managed Service Provider Company, Microsoft Office 365 provides a number of benefits for users. For example:
- Using this suite of products, users can work anywhere and the security that Microsoft offers users of their 365 products is extremely robust.
- Collaboration is facilitated among team members.
- With your subscription model, you automatically receive updates to the programs that you use whereas with the Office products which you would buy in-store in order to get an upgrade you’d have to buy another set of software.
A number of drawbacks were raised about Office 365, namely that if Internet connectivity is not great, your access to the products could be hindered. Compatibility issues were also raised as were issues with renewals.
G Suite
While with Office 365 you have limited online storage and need to pay should you wish to increase this, with G Suite you have unlimited storage capacity. (This is as opposed to the free Google Drive account which only allows you to store 15MB of information.)
Google Drive also allows you to work on documents simultaneously with other people and Microsoft’s OneDrive – as well as Sharepoint – allow you the same capability. Online collaboration is facilitated with a tool such as Google Meets and a bonus of this is that the paid-for version is free for everyone to use until the end of September 2020.
All in all, Google and Microsoft Office 365 offer more or less the same functionality. The one thing which seems to differentiate the two is that users report that Google’s functionality is more user-friendly than Microsoft’s which means that a qualified administrator is needed to develop an Office 365 environment that suits the specific environment.