In a word … no. I’ve been working with a company for about 5 months now that is rolling out google apps as it’s productivity suite. I must say, I like what Google is doing. The applications are easy to use, simple, and offer a great ability to work together with other people that is significantly better than anything I have seen from Microsoft. Even with all that, I still think the solution is inferior to Microsoft but I do think the issue is easily resolved.
Each week I have at least some time spent either creating or reviewing presentations, usually around status updates. Google Presentation allows me to quickly put together a clean and simple status page which I really like. I can share with colleagues and everyone can work on their slide at the same time which minimizes admin overhead to combine everything together. The problem is, Google has yet to get formatting right. Adding bullets on one page can cause font issues on another page. Italicizing a word may change the indent on a table. There are a number of screwball formatting issues that occur on Google Presentation that can make things virtually unreadable. With no rhyme or reason to the cause, you either spend a significant chunk of time fighting with format or just accept the oddball look and continue on. Powerpoint is fraught with it’s own quirks but nothing as problematic with the core functionality as this.
Google Document and Spreadsheet work extremely well for me. I also really like Google Calendar and Gmail. The focus on simplicity is great. Docs is also a great online repository with cool features. I also really like Forms for survey purposes.
So with all this love (save Powerpoint) why do I think Office is better? First it is the industry standard solution making it very easy and reliable to assume that I can create something in office and anyone can see it, edit it, or comment on it. Second, the simplistic bugs that plague some of the Google apps just don’t occur in Office. Third, Office has been around for coming up on 23 years. They have taken all the feedback, built all the capabilities, and been able to refine the product for 9 years longer than Google has been a company. Microsoft has Office in a great position filling a need that every organization has and filling it well. For all the bells and whistles, it just works.
If Google could get their product to just work right all the time it would take a huge leap forward and be a true competitor.
