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 did most of my doc writing in LyX before Google, though.

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.

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.

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.

It's not just the money it's also additional security vulns to defend.

Google is the fourth biggest public company in the world as measured by market cap.

A Microsoft 365 "E3" license is $20/user/month. They can afford it.

This restriction is entirely about eating your own dogfood.

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?)?

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.

three?

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.

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.

1. Yes, Google probably prefers for people to use its own products both for usability and security reasons.

2. Google also wants to save money. However, if someone wants a license for a Microsoft product, they can get one.

Can't they just participate in a call from the browser? I thought Google only banned the application/app, not usage of the service altogether.

Jitsi and Google Meet seem to work in both browsers, without requiring me to log in.

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

Not saying you should do that, but that's why there's a difference.

Seems to work for them, and gets around that whole song and dance you described.

Or better yet, don't use Zoom...

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.

Wait what? Could someone explain to me the reasoning behind a policy like this?

Edit: it appears to be a sexual harassment policy, and apparently Netflix has tried it [0]

[0] https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/netflix-five-second-s...

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.

https://qz.com/work/1306193/is-it-sexual-harassment-to-stare...

"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."

> Employees who have been using Zoom [...] can continue to do so through a web browser or via mobile.