Why I moved from Microsoft Office 365 to Google Apps – Part Two

Great article Richard, I must admit I've toyed with this in the past, but think I will be sticking with Office 365, Skydrive and OneNote for the time being :) Thought provoking though.

Thanks Chris! I gave up on Skydrive a while ago in favour of Dropbox - but I see a resurgence in it's popularity now it's integrated with Windows Phone. OneNote I just *wanted* to love, and think is a great tool, but Evernote won that battle too.

Good read, Richard. I have a similar setup, but do Google Contacts, bookmarks, and browser sync in a different way. I also have separate email and calendar, but all other services, like contacts, reader, drive/docs, Play, Maps and G+ go through my personal account as it was setup way before I started my company. As it turns out migrating or merging google accounts is near impossible, so I stay away from that.

Thanks Jakob! My own Browser Sync and Bookmarks is tied to my "personal" GMail account too, although having Google Calendar attached to my work Google Apps account gives the nice "Google Now" features I mentioned on my Android phone. Google Drive I've migrated all my documents to under the Google Apps work account too. Play, G+, Maps, YouTube and everything else remains under my personal GMail account - which is a bit of a hodgepodge as I use them predominantly for business purposes. It's clearly an issue for more than a few people, so fingers crossed Google address it with the ability to effectively merge accounts in the near future.

Interesting article. In your usage of the tools you seemed to concentrate on email but you mention you love Google docs but you still use Office on your desktop. My experience of testing in this scenario has been a nightmare as documents I'm using in Word, upload and convert to Google Docs, people might modify up there in the web browser, then I download, convert and update in Word. Between all this conversion we lose a lot of formatting and I can't use any advanced Word features, especially around embedding pictures, tables etc. I would also argue the value of using Google for just email if you aren't using the Google Docs and Sites. You can get a cheap P plan from Microsoft that gives me the nice Exchange 2013 OWA that I can now take offline (which I can't do with my Google Mail) so I get a decent email client. But from a cost point of view you need to ditch Office and go two feet into Google to get any cost savings. Otherwise you are paying Google just for mail and MS for an Office package. You can get 2 years on Microsoft's platform with Office as a subscription (with Email, Lync, SharePoint) for the same price as buying it off the shelf. So doing ROI studies for clients if you can't stand the thought of ditching Office then you're paying twice for the other Google apps you aren't using, but they don't have tiered plans like MS so you don't have to pay for what you aren't using.

Hi Tim - thanks for the comments, and you're right, I mostly focus on e-mail when there is much more to both Google Apps and Office 365. Since writing that article, while I've still got Microsoft Office installed locally, I've migrated nearly all my day-to-day documents into Google Docs. For most people I collaborate with, even non-Google Docs folk, we've found editing the documents "in the cloud" much easier. To be fair, like 95% of Word Processing and Spreadsheet users, I only use the most basic features - so you've got a valid point that advanced users may find Google Apps lacking. Just for reference - Google Mail works off-line too. I tested this on a trans-atlantic flight recently and can confirm it works. :-) You make a very valid point in that real savings will only be made if you commit to Google Docs exclusively. Since my migration to Google Apps though, it's fair to say I rarely open Microsoft Office at all any-more though.

Interesting perspective. I've just found myself going the opposite direction. In addition to the issues you have already highlighted the following has driven me away... Gmail - 'Conversation view' is an awful implementation. Often I click 'reply' to a thread and it hides the last persons comments thus I then lack context to which I am responding. The only way around this seems to be to 'pop out' the reply as a separate browser window and then maximize to fill the entire screen, Very poor UX design indeed. - Spam is constant despite my manual selection of spam emails and selecting the 'delete and report to google' button Calendar: - Poor UX - Printing a calendar is a disaster Google Docs: - Very minimalist, great for students perhaps and non-business/professional users - Requires a network connection which is not always practical for business users - Printing is cumbersome - Exporting files is also problematic, for example try to export my resume to email to a recruiter resulted in hours spent re-formatting the text - Privacy issues, do I want my financial information stored on google docs? OneNote vs Evernote ... errr are you even serious???? Bottom line is MS leads in the productivity space. Google provides a solution for the home user who does not believe in paying for software. I really did want to like Google Docs but I am very objective and believe in 'credit where credit is due', Microsoft wins here hands down.

Hi Dixon - thanks for the feedback! Firstly - yes, I'm serious about using Evernote - and so are 100M users worldwide. It sounds like you've made your mind up about OneNote, but as a former OneNote user myself who dismissed Evernote for many years, you might find it intriguing to take a fresh look. I appreciate your feedback about Google Apps. I'd agree with much of it - for instance, requiring a network connection IS a challenge for some people. Many more of us live with an "always on" Internet connection though, and so Google Apps is a good fit. For others, not so much. I would disagree with your view that Google Apps is only for home users and those that don't want to pay. In my experience, Google Apps does tend to have a niche -- that being younger, tech savvy and creative businesses, many of whom haven't grown up with the idea that Microsoft is the only choice - but as someone who likes to take an objective view and is open minded, you might find it interesting to read stories about thousands of businesses who've gone with Google at http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.html. There are some interesting case studies in there. I'd disagree with your "bottom line" that MS leads in the productivity space. Some will agree with you, others will vehemently disagree. All I will state is that in my experience -- some businesses choose Microsoft, some choose Google and all businesses will ultimately choose the tool that's the best fit for them. Thanks again for the feedback! It's good to hear different perspectives!

For a long time, I used MS office Home & Student - then they put the price up from £80 to £120, I never really used all the features in each program. I have moved over to google apps for now but might need to use office 365 as most companies as still using Microsft.

Adrian -- you may still need to use Office 365 in terms of learning how the Office Apps work, but in terms of compatibility, I find Google Apps can open and save pretty much any Microsoft Office files.

Very interesting article. It doesn't appear to be dated but as your talking about Windows 8, I assume its a few years old. It would be interesting to get an update of where you are now in the "Windows 10" era. I myself opted fro AWS Workmail, one of Amazon's best kept secrets. I'm not a power user so some of the extended features are not relevant. I did however find the migration process ridiculously easy, Amazon's documentation being impeccable. As a point of full disclosure I am no longer a Microsoft fan. I see them now as being part of the problem rather than the solution. Thanks for the article.

Martin -- thanks for the kind feedback. This article was written circa 2012. I'm still on the Google Apps platform, and still love it (although Microsoft has come a LONG way during that time with Microsoft 365).