Google vs. Microsoft has been the great email debate for a decade or so, and both sides have strong cases to make for their favorite. With the advent of Microsoft 365 and the evolution of Google Workspace, the competition continued to escalate. Then COVID hit and pushed work-from-home to the masses, which upped the ante again. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of these two behemoth platforms, starting with the core feature of business email.

Microsoft is the OG in the email game, with its tried and tested Exchange system, its Outlook client and the .PST email database format. Everything from the quirky suggested contacts to its database size limitations plagued users and techs alike, but its integration with Active Directory’s single-sign-on kept Exchange in the top spot for medium to large businesses. 

Microsoft’s 365 cloud hosting freed client companies from building and maintaining on-premises servers in exchange for a regular monthly subscription, and put Microsoft in direct competition with Google’s cloud-first architecture and easy anywhere access. With Microsoft’s Office suite already the business standard, it was tough to leave the Microsoft ecosystem entirely in exchange for Google’s more minimal Office suite.

With the urgent move to WFH in 2020, Microsoft rapidly leveled up its virtual meeting game by pouring resources and features into the then-fledgling Teams app to keep companies from jumping to the more established Google Meets. With this last addition, Microsoft rounded out its offering quite well.

Google is the unlikely contender; a company who started as a minimalist search engine, but moved into the email market with a refreshing and forward-looking product in the early 2000’s that quickly put Microsoft on the defensive with features like grouping email conversations, blurring the line between email and instant messaging, and maintaining an industry leading spam filter that worked out of the box and was easy to manage.

Google saw the cloud revolution coming and led the way with large storage allocations for access-anywhere documents, easy sharing, and simultaneous editing long before Microsoft had answers for that kind of accessibility and versatility. Google pioneered video conferencing, and paired all of its offerings with great mobile apps and maintained a connection to its roots by integrating high-quality search options into each of its products.

While businesses entrenched in the older Microsoft platforms raced to get up to speed when 2020’s WFH move pushed knowledge workers almost entirely to the cloud, Google users continued with business as usual. 

Who’s the winner? With these two tech powerhouses duking it out for market share, we the customers are the real winners as they push each other to refine and evolve their product offerings. Each platform has their ideal applications and cultural appeal, as well as unique limitations and quirks. With over a decade in IT and extensive experience with both platforms, Renowned Tech is comfortable with both, and happy to discuss the merits of each as they apply to your company’s unique needs and culture.

What about a hybrid option? Administratively and financially speaking, trying to keep a foot in  each of Microsoft and Google’s platforms is not ideal. Organizations end up paying twice, IT administrators have to manage both, and users have to carry multiple apps and logins. So while both platforms have benefits, trying to capture both ends up canceling them out because of the hassle of management. We recommend identifying your organization’s core features and choosing the ecosystem that best meets your high-value needs.

Can we survive switching platforms? It’s true that switching email and storage platforms is time consuming and costly, but any change is difficult, and the sooner you make it, the easier it is, and the sooner you benefit from the increased efficiency. Renowned Tech has proven processes and software to ease the transition. In the words of Scotland’s first billionaire, Sir Tom Hunter, “If you were running a marathon, would you wait until the 22nd mile to take out a stone in your shoe?”