* > I've been trying to start a business lately, and as many people do, have chosen to rely on Google's suite of products.*
Just a reminder, most businesses fail - so doing what many people do is not necessarily the best thing to do.
Having said that, it's rather foolish to have your business depend on Google. They have repeatedly demonstrated they're not good business partners and the main thrust of their business isn't in providing products and services for businesses. They don't support their services, they'll drop them at a moment's notice without any regard to the impacts to your business, and there's no way to get ahold of a human being when things inevitably go sour. Why do you want to partner with someone like that?
I bash on the technical merits of Windows all day long but one thing Microsoft has done well over its nearly 50 year history is serving the needs of business. It's in their DNA. Office 365 is a very capable, and supported, platform. Nice thing is you can run it on a Mac too!
Exactly. They make major decisions, give you less than 3 months to completely change things you depend on. And you can't even get someone on the phone (or even email for god-sake) to complain to.
Sorry, but as a user, Office 365 is a nightmare to use. Outlook on Mac can’t even do in-line email quotes. Sharing documents in your org is done via SharePoint(tm), the greatest nightmare on the planet. Don’t get me started on MS teams.
Google products are much better from a UX perspective imho.
I think it's just a matter of opinion. I've used both O365 and GSuite extensively at different jobs, and after the initial switch, they are not too different, each has their annoyances, but I don't see a major change in productivity or quality of output between the two.
In my business I like the option of sharing a .docx or .pptx and not having to ask a client to use google docs to view stuff. But when I had google docs, I made it work. I agree with the root comment that MS is much more business oriented though. At the end of the day, Google's "products" are still just a ruse to sell ads, so they don't have the institutional focus on solving business problems that MS has (not that MS is in any way perfect)
Lots of horrible-to-use software is extremely successful commercially. This usually happens when users of the software are not the ones making purchase decisions (SAP) or if there are strong network effects (Windows).
Just a reminder, most businesses fail - so doing what many people do is not necessarily the best thing to do.
Having said that, it's rather foolish to have your business depend on Google. They have repeatedly demonstrated they're not good business partners and the main thrust of their business isn't in providing products and services for businesses. They don't support their services, they'll drop them at a moment's notice without any regard to the impacts to your business, and there's no way to get ahold of a human being when things inevitably go sour. Why do you want to partner with someone like that?
I bash on the technical merits of Windows all day long but one thing Microsoft has done well over its nearly 50 year history is serving the needs of business. It's in their DNA. Office 365 is a very capable, and supported, platform. Nice thing is you can run it on a Mac too!