I just want to echo this to make sure that everyone understands Google and Microsoft are worlds apart on support.

We've all heard about the horror stories that it doesn't matter what you do with Google you cannot get human support unless you get to the top of HN or Reddit.

MS are totally different, they offer support for every service, you just have to pay for it. I think they also offer different levels of support, some of our programmers at a previous (small) company could talk to the Silverlight team over problems they were having after it just came out.

Funnily enough, when I google "google paid support" the top result is this little (frightening) gem:

http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...

Compare that to this, "microsoft paid support":

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/services/en-id

I'm in no way affiliated with MS, actually use Google Apps myself.

This "Google has no support" is a myth that I see consistently repeated on Hacker News that I can't understand it's repeated. Google's support situation is actually the same as Microsoft's: if you pay (i.e. have a Google Apps for Business) account, you get 24/7 phone support. I'm pretty sure that it's for any service linked to your Google Apps for Business account (including Voice), but not completely sure since I've never had to use it.

You can find it here: http://support.google.com/a/bin/request.py

I've used Google Apps paid support and had disappointing experiences. Apps is only one of many Google products, many of which have no paid support options. I've had mediocre support experiences with support for other (expensive) products, like DFP. Overall, whenever I hit a wall (bad/missing/unclear documentation, apparent bugs, etc) with a Google service, I wince because I've learned to expect some pain.

No it's not, you can't get consumer support for Google, you can for MS. You can't pick just one of their many services and go, "look at this one!".

I just went their with my free apps account and it's not exactly forthcoming about how either.

What are you talking about? I posted a link with their support options and your response is "No, you can't get support". Clearly, you can - I linked to it. If I go there with my free apps account it's crystal clear, in big letters: "Email and phone support: Not available for the free edition of Google Apps. Find out about upgrading to Google Apps for Business."

Microsoft is also pretty slow moving, because they worry about all this crap.

MS engineers complain about all the bureaucracy involved in change anything - check with legal, update user docs, update support docs, update the tests, check the internationalization and accessibility. But that's the cost of providing a solid product.

Google has two big products - ads and search. Search is more or less a single text box, and a list of results. There's some bells and whistles, but as long as you can type in a search box it's good enough. Ads are similarly bullet proof (though plenty of people get pissed off at being blacklisted).

Same here. I've had extremely good experiences with Microsoft support - a particularly difficult issue was escalated 3 times so we ended up in contact with one of the original developers.

I worked for a Gold partner at the time. Now I work for a company that buys hundreds of thousands of dollars of Microsoft software, and while I'm not in contact with support, I hear they've also done well by us. They even do special patches if needed.

OTOH one of the biggest retail companies here tried a companywide rollout of Google Apps for businesses and discarded it mainly because of the lack of support.