Office Online versus Google Apps

At this time, Microsoft and Google are locked in battle over free-for-personal-use productivity applications, there's no one best online suite; both are quite capable and both have some important limitations.

Microsoft, Google, and Apple all offer online productivity suites that are free for personal use. And unlike past "free" suites (yes, I mean you, Microsoft Works and MS Office Web Apps!), these latest online suites are all surprisingly capable — and getting better almost weekly. In this discussion, I compare Office Online and Google Apps: two suites experienced Windows and Office users are most likely to use. Apple's iWork for iCloud I'll save for another day. It represents an elegant evolution of the Office genre, but there's a significant learning curve for dyed-in-the-wool Office "Officionados."

In short, Office Online and Google Apps are both so good you might not need to buy a standalone version of Office or subscribe to Office 365. Really! Microsoft and Google have their own reasons for dangling freebies at Windows users — more about that later. But whatever their motivations, using online suites could mean more money in your pocket.

But before I get into the details, let's clarify some confusing terminology.

Four months ago, "Office Web Apps" was a backwater website that seemed to be a weak adjunct to the desktop version of Office. Then Microsoft launched Office Online and kicked the old website into the bit bucket.

Google's terminology is, if anything, even more convoluted than Microsoft's. (And you didn't think that was possible.) Officially, the suite I discuss in this article is known as Google Drive, though few people call it that. Google has, of course, a cloud-storage service known as "Google Drive" — it competes with Microsoft's OneDrive.

For reasons that defy logic, the productivity tools once known as Google Apps — Document, Spreadsheet, and Presentation — now live under the cloud-storage, Google Drive site (see Figure 2). In common parlance, "Google Docs" might refer to just the word processor — or it might refer to all three productivity apps. And "Google Drive" might — or might not — include the cloud-storage component.

Both Microsoft's and Google's online productivity apps run only in Web browsers. You don't install anything; simply fire up your browser, go to the appropriate site (office.com for Office Online and drive.google.com for Google Apps), sign in — and you're ready to rock and roll. You will, of course, need a Microsoft account for Office Online and a Google account for Google Drive. Both accounts are free.

Based on my extensive testing, there's almost no difference in running any of the apps in Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer — or on a wide variety of platforms that included Win7, Win8, OS X, iOS, and Android.

Office Online is free for personal use and for some organizations (Office 365 for Nonprofits). For businesses, it starts at U.S. $60 per year/per person (Office 365 Small Business) and goes up from there (more info).

Google Apps/Drive is also free for personal use. The cost for organizations ranges from free (nonprofit and educational) to $50 per year/per person for Google Apps for Business (more info).

Both Office Online and Google Apps have familiar productivity-suite interfaces that aren't amenable to touch-based tablet/small-screen use. In fact, Google Apps looks a lot like Office 2003.