Why I Purchased Microsoft 365 and Not Google Workspace

I created a business email ID for my consulting, for which I had to choose between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. I was impressed by Google Meet’s excellent noise-cancelation:

I also wanted to be able to record meetings. But these two features turned out to be available only in the ₹1000/user/month plan ¹. Microsoft offered both these features in the ₹150 plan.

Many services today are commoditised: both offer email, calendar, documents, spreadsheets, meetings, cloud storage, and so on. Both are polished and intuitive². Both are secure, cloud-based. Both support all the devices I use. Most products are not unique and differentiated like Crew Dragon or the iPhone in 2009. They’re commoditised. The only remaining factor is price-performance. Not just lowest price, but the lowest price for a certain set of benefits, like noise-cancelation and recording of meetings. Companies that can’t compete on price-performance will lose.

And Google’s reputation for deleting their customers’ accounts randomly with no recourse doesn’t help, either. This happened to me when Google’s systems were unable to charge my credit card for 1 paise and they threatened to delete my startup’s projects.

1. Google does offer a cheaper ₹250 plan, but it lacks both these features, and it offers a paltry 30 GB of storage, while Microsoft not only offers both these features, it also offers 1 TB for a lower fee.

I also wanted public calendars, which both offer.

All numbers are inclusive of 18% GST.

2. You can always find cases that one service handles poorly, but the other service will handle other cases poorly.