Google Adds More Tools as it Aims to Surpass Microsoft

On Wednesday, Alphabet’s Google said that it will now enable its corporate Gmail customers to edit documents and make changes to other files without leaving the email service. The move comes in the wake of increased competition with Microsoft and its attempt to lure clients by making tools more integrated.

Google’s cloud unit’s made the announcement on annual partners and customer conference virtual gathering. The event has been shifted online due to the novel coronavirus pandemic over several weeks. Currently, Microsoft office’s suite dominates the corporate market for email and document-editing tools globally.

For more than a decade now, Google has been intensively trying to compete with Microsoft Corp’s Office. During the pandemic, as most of the businesses started operating from home, both the companies have added video-calling features and other collaboration tools.

While Microsoft has limited internal ties between its email counterpart Outlook and chats tool, Teams, Google has contended that it has found an edge by promoting Gmail as a single hub for potential customers. Through its services, Google provides workers to access text chats, documents, and video calls at the same place.

On Wednesday’s interview, Javier Soltero, a Google VP and Microsoft’s ex-employee, said “Microsoft is still telling you there are two separate places to check, two different habits, two inboxes to look at,” without elaborating, Soltero said, “They are not incentivized to do a deep integration between Teams and Outlook.”

In the future, according to Soltero, consumers who are using the free version of Gmail might get access to its new integrations.

The company has also introduced several options that are already offered by Microsoft Teams. Some of them include the option to pin conversations (making them easy to find) and the ability users to list an out of office notice.