I mean, Google bans MS Office from employees' computers as well (with special-case exceptions), so they use Docs instead. Since Google has Meet (Hangouts), this isn't really surprising.
It mainly sucks for when an employee (especially in sales) has a call with a client that uses Zoom and can't use Meet, because then you're forced to dial in, which just puts you at a disadvantage when everyone can see everyone's face except yours.
Edit: per comments, people can still use the browser version of Zoom, so doesn't seem that bad.
MS Office isn't "banned" from employees' computers at Google. If you need it (and some do) you must request it specifically, because it costs Google a nontrivial amount of money for every user. Same thing with any piece of commercial software: for example, I have Adobe Photoshop on my Google laptop, and I had to request it because it costs Google a few hundred bucks, and most people don't need it at all.
Before Google Docs existed, many employees used MS Office, and when Docs was being rolled out Googlers were incentivized to switch to Docs by being offered kudos, swag, etc (ie, the carrot, not the stick).
I imagine most people who want MS Office over Google Docs probably want it for Excel, which IIUC as several powerful features not present in Google's Sheets.
The only thing Google Docs has over MS is the collaboration.
Word in the browser is a billion times better for formatting than Google Docs. I loath using google docs. But when it comes to Collab, Google docs wins hands down.
> The only thing Google Docs has over MS is the collaboration.
As someone who has had to build relatively complex tools in both Sheets and Excel, I would have to say Sheets has done a much more impressive job with their builtin formulas/functions than Excel.
Also JS vs VB, im not a big fan of JS but only a madman prefers VB.
The JS in Sheets also run in the cloud. Really nice for scheduled things or things that talk to an api or similar. But being able to run stuff locally is nice to.
Entire GSuites is a productivity and doc formatting disaster. From docs, sheets to mail all very inconsistent and formatting of content and information is terrible compared to Office. Glad I'm back at a company that uses O365.
Yes, we can afford it, and that's why if you want MS Office you click a button on a web page and get it immediately. But why would we throw away money by having it installed by default?
> Nobody is dumb enough to believe that Google is saving money by not using office.
Maybe I'm dumb, why wouldn't they be saving money by not paying for Office? Obviously they could buy it for every employee, including the majority that don't need it, but why? They could also just light money on fire (but why?)?
Office is business productivity software. You don't buy it for every employee, you negotiate a license for the number of seats in use. It has way more features than google docs and is standard everywhere. It's like saying you could save money by having programmers write code on pencil and paper. You saved the money on the computer but you have a net loss because you lost the power and efficiency of real time editing, compiling and debugging. These corporate guys just drink the internal koolaid/spin from hr or whatever and come here repeating nonsense as if its fact and it annoys me. It's dogfooding with some minor privacy/security concerns since microsoft is competitor, we get it, just call it what it is and move on.
> It has way more features than google docs and is standard everywhere
I work for another FAANG and we don’t use MS Word. It certainly isn’t “standard” for us. It’s not standard for two of the three FAANG companies, so “everywhere” is inaccurate. Being popular isn’t the same thing as standard. Pages is a far more usable for the vast majority of use cases. Most people aren’t creating extremely complicated word processing documents in their day-to-day. Word is a bloated mess. Keynote is far easier and more elegant than PowerPoint. Excel however certainly shines for big spreadsheet work, but for most spreadsheet work Numbers and the google spreadsheet are perfectly fine.
This isn't about the merits of excel over sheets, it's about employees coming on the board and lying to promote their company. Google makes 1.61 million in revenue per employee. Honestly it's only going to get worse, because if you see the videos of the company meetings, Sundar was always the super loyalist that would say anything to protect Google or run interference for senior leadership. And now that he's CEO they will start aping him.
I may work for Google but I am often critical of them. I have no reason to lie in this instance, and anyone you talk to who works for Google will corroborate what I'm saying. Not everything is a conspiracy.
Your reasoning is based on the belief that Google is sacrificing productivity by not giving all employees office. GP is directly contradicting that line of thought, which makes the rest of it fall apart.
there is two narratives, which do you think is more likely:
1. Google is dogfooding it's own products to improve them and make them competitive and stop potential data/privacy/security leaks by using external software.
2. Google is trying to save 20 bucks
There is nothing wrong with Google docs or sheets and I have used them both. But sooner or later you make enough documents or work with enough spreadsheets you're going to want or need some feature that office has.
Why should it be an either/or thing? Both are valid reasons for Google to prefer its employees use Docs. However the fact that you can choose to use MS Office without any special permissions somewhat undermines your reasoning in point 1.
Google may be a rich company but it's also a very frugal company in many ways, particularly wrt technology (they pioneered the "huge amounts of redundant cheap hardware" approach to DC construction, for example). When Googlers were being coaxed into switching to Docs from MS Office, the financial benefits were front and centre to that pitch.
Google is a large company so they have lots of money, yes. Google also has lots of employees, so paying a per-employee price for anything gets expensive. I can't find a Google headcount vs Alphabet, but at the end of 2019 Alphabet had 118,899 employees. $20/month for each of those employees would cost $2,377,980 a month or $28,535,760/year assuming no annual-payment discounts. Google could absolutely absorb that easily if they purchased Office for every employee by default, or if only 25% of the company gets around to requesting it they can save $21 million a year simply by not buying software nobody asked for or intended to use.
I'd seriously doubt more than a few of people at Google would want to use 365 at work. I for one never felt the need when I was there nor afterwards and the entire company is fully utilizing Google Docs which is a better product as far as sharing and search is concerned. It's not like people at Google constantly email .docx files to each other, lol. Nevertheless, you can request it (in an AppStore like fashion, not some overburdened process) if you really need MSOffice, but Zoom binary being banned seems to be a completely different matter though, as pointed out in other posts.
For workplace collaboration, sharing is the highlight, not formatting (unless you're designing for paper-based publication). I have to say the few times I encountered the browser-based Word 356, it felt like total shit. Cannot imagine anyone really using it if they have the desktop app installed. Seems like a checkmark product and the real users end up using the full app version. I've even heard this from friends at Microsoft.
From what I've tried the desktop apps themselves do cloud-driven collab just fine, so I don't really see a reason to use a browser app when native's available. May just be me seeing things, but the native-to-native sync seems faster than with the web apps. Sadly that means sharing is a bit less convenient than just click link to open.
Just because Google has a lot of money doesn’t mean they’ll go wasting it on software licenses. 24 million might not even come close to what they make per year, but they still have to be considerate on what they spend their money on.
$20/user/month is tens of millions of dollars every year for Google. Sure, they can afford it, but I'm quite sure they have better things to spend money on.
The browser version of Zoom seems to require a free account be created, and it was audio only in Chromium, I could not get it to use my camera. Zoom refused to work in Firefox.
Jitsi and Google Meet seem to work in both browsers, without requiring me to log in.
You can join Zoom meetings on your browser without creating an account. It's a bit off the beaten path:
1. Go to zoom.com
2. Click "Join a meeting"
3. Enter meeting id and click Join
4. Ignore the automatic app download
5. Go back
6. Click "Join a meeting" again
7. Enter meeting id and click Join again
8. Ignore the app download again
9. Click at "If nothing prompts, click here"
10. Click "Join from your browser"
11. Agree to terms of service
12. Enter password and name, click Join
It's improved a bit, and actually works fine in Firefox Nightly right now, but you have to craft the web client URL directly. The UI will try its very best to make you download the client.
Seen somewhere else: when you get to the web page that launches the app, don't allow that launch, hit (IIRC) "Retry", still don't allow it, and the page should say "Having trouble?" offer a link to the web version.
I've joined plenty of Zoom meetings without creating an account. Are you sure it wasn't just asking you to enter your name and email in the page so people on the call would know who you are when you joined?
Personally, I feel much advantaged when no one can see my face.
And in truth, I usually don't want to see anyone else's face either. Aren't there companies that forbid looking at someone for more than five seconds? Well guess what, on a video call, they're staring at you for minutes on end.
Extremely unlikely Netflix actually has a policy like this. It was probably an example of what could be considered creepy in some circumstances during a training.
Perhaps, but almost certainly not. This sounds exactly like things that were said in sexual harassment trainings I've been to at other large companies. These trainings often provide examples of what can be construed which ways, because a non-trivial slice of any given sample of humanity totally lacks social graces. They don't want someone to later complain that, "I was only looking," when they get reprimanded for leering at a colleague.
Examples like this can accidentally or intentionally be misread as policy, but it is not actually policy. It's an example of what can be not OK in some contexts. Of course, I'm happy to be corrected if someone who works there wants to jump on and say otherwise. But I very much doubt that such a policy exists. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
"A spokeswoman clarified there is no such “rule” at Netflix. However, she confirms that the recommendation was, in fact, discussed in an anti-harassment training session, though it’s not an official guideline."
What should I look at conversing with another person? I used to look in the eyes or just in the face, I don't understand why is it harassment? Should I look at tits instead, is it less harassment or what? Shall I just close my eyes? West culture is weird.
It mainly sucks for when an employee (especially in sales) has a call with a client that uses Zoom and can't use Meet, because then you're forced to dial in, which just puts you at a disadvantage when everyone can see everyone's face except yours.
Edit: per comments, people can still use the browser version of Zoom, so doesn't seem that bad.