Microsoft Office Web Apps Vs. Google Docs

It also is in no way an upgrade to Office Live Workspace. Office Web Apps is a true cloud-based productivity suite. Live Workspace was more of a Web-based plug-in for Office that provided some storage and collaboration features and still required a local install of the Office Suite to use it.

Office Web Apps is a good offering that enhances the Office ecosystem, which includes OneNote and SharePoint. It provides excellent collaboration features and you can get done pretty much everything in Office Web Apps that you could do with the "thick" Office version. There are still some features that seem to be not as robust when compared to Google Docs but there are others that are better than Google's offering.

Keeping in mind that Microsoft Office Web Apps is still in technical preview, here's a look at various features of Office Web Apps vs. Google Docs:

Interoperability:

In the technical preview, it is possible to upload files other than Microsoft Office docs. You just can't view or edit them within Office Web Apps. Perhaps this is something Microsoft will address in the final release, but that's highly unlikely. Google Apps provides greater document interoperability. Users can upload, view and edit Microsoft Office documents, StarOffice, HTML files, .ODT, .CSV, .ODS and PDF files. The argument for Microsoft, of course, is Microsoft makes a proprietary document format, so why should it support other formats? Yet, isn't interoperability a large part of collaboration?

Multibrowser support:

Microsoft is being flexible in this area. Office Web Apps is supported on Firefox and Safari in addition to Internet Explorer. From our review in the Test Center, Office Web Apps works well in all three browsers; there is no user experience loss when using a non-IE browser. Google Docs extends that support to all three browsers as well and to Google Chrome, naturally.

Collaboration:

Microsoft Office Web Apps uses top-level permissions in its folder hierarchy. When a user is granted top-level permissions, those permissions trickle down to subfolders. You can't assign explicit permissions to subfolders. However, sharing folders in Office Web Apps is a step ahead of folder sharing in Google Docs. For some reason you cannot as of now share folders in Google Docs except by using a Google Docs API. Businesses can really expand collaboration options by incorporating SharePoint Server with Office Web Apps.

Word Web App:

Although there was not much to review with Word App because the technical preview does not contain editing capability (it will be available in the beta release), it's safe to say that Microsoft Word is the standard when it comes to other word processing software, even in the cloud. Google Docs' counterpart, Document, is just getting up to speed by incorporating features that have already been in Word such as language translation, enhanced "Find and Replace" and Print Preview.

Excel Web App:

Although not as robust as locally installed Office Excel (or "thick" Excel), users can change data, enter or edit formulas and apply basic formatting within spreadsheets. Surprisingly, there seems to be no ready way to create charts. Chart creation is a feature within Google Spreadsheet. Users of Excel Web App can collaborate on a workbook at the same time.

PowerPoint Web App:

As is the case with the Excel Web App, the PowerPoint Web App seems to be more about editing and collaborating on presentations that have been created in "thick" PowerPoint. You can't, for example, add backgrounds or animation to slides, at least not in the technical preview. Google Doc's Presentation also is quite feature-thin, but you can at least apply themes and backgrounds. In PowerPoint Web App, users can quickly add slides to existing presentations, create new ones or add pictures, Smart Art or links.

OneNote Web App:

This feature was not available in the technical preview. OneNote lets users create notebooks and share and sync notes with others.

Office Web Apps is true cloud-based productivity, but it is still an enhancement to rather than an alternative to traditional Microsoft Office. Corporate users who have Office deeply entrenched in their work environments will find many benefits of incorporating Office Web Apps. For users and organizations looking to completely free themselves from the shackles of local HDD-based applications, Microsoft Office Web Apps may be a tough sell against Google Docs or Google Apps.