Ah, happy week, when tech giants roll out new products and battle metaphors are unleashed. Earlier this week, Office 365 came out of public beta and was soon after pitted aginst Google Apps. Then Google+ hit the scene, threatening all at once Facebook, Twitter, and Skype.
Numerous opinion pieces around the web have pointed out why the new services will (or won't) be able to kill the reigning service providers. VentureBeat writes that Microsoft's Office 365 will clobber Google Apps because it looks and acts just like the native Office apps (true--preservation of Office document formatting is one of several Office Web Apps advantages over Google Docs and Zoho Docs). Google itself has blogged that there are 365 reasons to use Google Apps over Office 365.
As for Google's social service, Google+, Business Insider's Steve Kovach writes that it's like Facebook with no people (i.e., nothing Facebook fans would jump ship for) and GigaOm agrees that Facebook is probably safe but Skype should be worried, but Dave Taylor writes on the Huffington Post that Google+ runs circles past Facebook.
With all the opinions and comparisons, it may be hard to make an informed decision about which service is best. If you need to decide between using Office 365 or Google Apps, however, chances are your decision is already made for you based on whether you use Microsoft Office for work and require that complex formatting fidelity or other business case, or if you're already using the cheaper Google Apps service or are drawn to Google's broader collaborative capabilities.
In the broader scheme of things, though, maybe this isn't really a war. As Walter Adamson writes, both Office 365 and Google Apps will be winners--the services help each other gain recognition for cloud productivity and increase development.
Pitting Google+ against Facebook and predicting which will come out on top is also just fun for bloggers to do--like comparing Android and iOS or Mac and PC. Well, maybe it's a little more fun and a refreshing new thing to debate. So which is your pick?
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