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Google’s new Microsoft Office plugin allows users to open and save Drive files

Google has a new plugin out for Microsoft Office (Windows only, for now) which makes it possible to access files stored in Drive from Office and save edits back to the cloud storage service, as well as create new files in Office and save them directly to Drive. The plugin works with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint (2007, 2010, and 2013 versions), and Office 365.

Here’s what saving a new document looks like in Word once the plugin is installed:

This plugin isn’t anything monumental, but Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity applications still has an undeniably significant hold on the corporate market. By making Drive more interoperable with the suite, Google can ease people into trying its cloud-based applications for getting work done, initially by pushing the benefit of Drive for sharing files with teams, and easily accessing files across devices. It’s a strategy Google’s competitors have claimed to use to gain a foothold in the corporate world – get enough average employees in a company using your product for some of their needs, and eventually IT will budge and consider switching over for everything. Google has a website up dedicated to the new plugin.

Google’s Contact Migration tool enables easy contact importing for Apps admins

Google is making it easier for businesses to switch to its Apps for Business productivity suite from Microsoft’s Exchange and Office 365 services. The company today added a new migration tool to the Apps admin console that makes bringing over employees’ contacts as easy as filling out a form, according to its blog post.


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Microsoft OneDrive now provides unlimited cloud storage for Office 365 subscribers

Microsoft on Monday announced that it will be eliminating its top-tier cloud storage plan and offering unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 subscribers at no additional cost. The change will begin rolling out today for Office 365 Home, Personal and University customers and will continue over the coming months.
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Office Mobile for Android goes free for all users

While Microsoft’s biggest news of the day might have been the debut of its Office productivity app suite for iPad, there was also news on the Android side as well.

Microsoft didn’t make dedicated apps for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, but the company did make Office Mobile for Android free for all users. Previously, Office Mobile for Android required an active subscription to Office 365.

Just like Office Mobile for Windows Phone, we are making Office Mobile for iPhone and Android phones free for everyone. With Office Mobile, you have the ability to view and edit your Office content on the go. Office Mobile is available in the App Store and Google Play.

Now that Microsoft has moved that requirement to its dedicated iPad apps, Android and iPhone users can now enjoy Office Mobile’s full feature set without any limitations and not subscribe to the membership.

Office Mobile for Android is available for free on the Google Play Store.

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Canada’s national broadcaster CBC switches 12,000 employees to Google Apps

Just a few days after we learned that the city of Boston had dropped Microsoft and switched 20,000 employees to Google Apps, Canada’s national broadcaster CBC announced today on Google’s Canada Blog that it has transitioned 12,000 employees to Google Apps in just 90 days.

CBC’s Senior Enterprise Architect made a point of noting that the company looked at both Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps before making the decision to go Google:

With a company-wide goal to reduce infrastructure and a need for better messaging and collaboration, we decided to look at public cloud solutions such as Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365. It was clear that Google Apps was the right solution for us based on cost, proven service level and availability guarantee and the breath of tools the platform offered for collaboration. We also had great support from the media groups in our company (about 70% of our employees), as many of them had been using personal Google accounts to communicate already with external users. Once we decided to “go Google” we were able to complete a smooth 90-day deployment with the help of Google Apps reseller, Onix , by March 1, 2013.

Edmonton becomes first major Canadian city to adopt Google Apps

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Google already announced some big new enterprise partners adopting Google Apps this year, despite Microsoft launching its “Googlighting” smear campaign to promote its Office 365 alternative. In January, it signed its biggest deal with a single company by transitioning roughly 110,000 employees across 26 countries from Spanish bank BBVA to Google Apps. For governments, Colorado recently adopted the Google Apps for Government platform, and today Google announced on the Official Enterprise Blog that Edmonton has become the first major Canadian city to make the switch:


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In Microsoft’s latest ad against Google, the Gmail man is reading your mail

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[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrkAuwaoFGg”]

ZDNet has posted a video of an internal Microsoft ad, reportedly shown at the Microsoft Exchange Conference, comparing Office 365 to Gmail. As you could imagine, Microsoft bashes Gmail pretty bad with the concept of Google reading people’s mail to serve up better ads.

Except Google Apps for Enterprise doesn’t do ads.

This video is obviously trying to sell Office 365 over Google Apps. Microsoft told ZDNet the video isn’t theirs, but we wonder who else can make such awesomely bad videos.

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