With the emergence of cloud computing, there are more and more users who are using web-based office suites to run and edit word documents or PowerPoint presentations for the convenience of being able to have multiple editors and also convenience of passing the documents to viewers which you want to show. That means when you are running a document on Google Docs for example, you can allow access to people who you want for them to view or even edit the document. Thus, it is very convenient for students doing a project that requires use of word document or presentation to do collaborative text editing.
Google Docs vs Microsoft Office Web Apps
1) Storage
Both services allow users to upload any file and use the service as storage. Microsoft's SkyDrive offers 25GB of free personal storage with individual files limited to 100MB while Google Docs offers data storage of any files up to 1GB each in size.
2) Collaborating
Google Docs offers real-time collaboration where edits are saved and shown to everyone instantly. Microsoft is also bringing similar feature which is called co-authoring. Also, Microsoft offers sharing but only one user is able to edit the document at a time.
3) Overall Features
Google Docs include many popular features in word processors such as spell check, tables, equations and much more. Google Docs also allows users to create web forms which can be used to conduct survey or collate information from people.
In conclusion, I would recommend Google Docs although the storage provided is lesser compared to Microsoft's Office Web Apps, I think that real-time collaboration is more important than storage as the main convenience that Web-based office suites can bring to users is being able to let multiple users edit a document at the same time.
By Zi Qiang
