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Ron

Welcome to The Geek Freaks Podcast episode 6 Outlook v. Gmail. Today with us we have Ben Hillard in spirit and in voice and Thomas Darrington. You’re like a ghost Ben.

Ben

Ah it’s nice to be here.

Ron

It’s nice to be a ghost. So, guys in your technical background and technical experience we brought you in because you’ve seen a little bit of both. So, what…so, we know what you use here, right it’s Outlook because we are yeah… what if Ben’s like no I don’t use iMail…

Thomas

Yeah, I’ve just been using Gmail the whole time.

Ben

Yeah.

Ron

Have you guys used Outlook like at home or Gmail at home or what are you guys using for your personal email cause I know inside it’s all Outlook…so, what’re we working with?

Thomas

I actually still have a Hotmail account.

Ben

Really? You do?

Thomas

Yeah, no I still have a Hotmail account.

Ron

That’s a thing?

Thomas

Yeah, oh yeah.

Ben

Oh.

Thomas

It’s from like 1998. My sister set it up for me and I’ve been using it ever since.

Ben

That’s fair.

Ron

Your sister set it up for you?

Thomas

Yeah, I was completely…I was like 10 years old.

Ben

My sister set up my Gmail account when I was 10 years old.

Thomas

There we go.

Ron

You guys are just breaking the ULAs by having adults do it for you?

Thomas

[Laughs] I mean yeah that’s a way to get around it.

Ben

[Laughs] Yeah.

Ron

So, I’m Gmail at home, like so I have my own personal email, it’s Gmail. I only have like 3 email addresses.

Thomas

I also have a Gmail account with the Hotmail account, it’s more for spam mail.

Ben

I don’t actually use Gmail anymore.

Ron

Why?

Ben

I moved to ProtonMail.

Ron

To what?

Ben

I moved to ProtonMail because I am very indie and cool.

Thomas

You need to explain…what like…you’ve talked to me about this before, right?

Ben

ProtonMail is a mail service they are focused mostly on privacy so uh they have zero knowledge and I use them for my primary email address. It’s my email@myemail.com. I pay $5 a month for it, and I’ve got about 5GB of space, and ya know I just send emails every so often.

Ron

So, they don’t…okay so we can talk about that I guess real quick. So, Gmail you essentially are the product that’s why it’s free, right because they are harvesting all your data.

Ben

Yeah.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

Microsoft though, I don’t know if they do that, right because if you have an Office 365…

Ben

I think they do.

Thomas

They are constantly asking if they can scrape your data so…

Ron

So, you’re saying I’m paying to be scraped?

Thomas

I mean I don’t know how in-depth they are getting they might just be detecting like usage.

Ben

I don’t think it’s for the paid accounts I think it’s mostly for the free accounts.

Ron

That they scrape?

Ben

Yeah, I mean with our Outlook, I’m using the Outlook app I can see like contextually, automatically generated messages, so I assume that they are scraping something.

Ron

Oh yeah, I didn’t even think about that.

Ben

Yeah.

Thomas

I assume at this point in this day in age everybody is checking some type of usage data or something and how much of your privacy is getting pulled on that, I have no idea, but…

Ron

Well I know that, but I mean…we will talk about that in a second.

Thomas

Yeah, sure.

Ron

But, like…no we have to talk about it right now because it’s going to bug me.

Thomas

[Laughs] Yeah.

Ron

But isn’t it wild to think that either of these platforms that we do business on or with in some form or fashion is reading the business we are doing within it?

Thomas

Yeah. I’m not a fan of that.

Ben

I mean I don’t know if it’s necessarily like that out there. I mean they have to pay their employees somehow and it’s not going to be like community supported because it’s made __ really great or utter garbage. So, I think they gotta go like yeah, we have to make a profit somehow and I think it makes a lot of sense if they go let’s sell what we can.

Ron

But, like what I’m saying from the aspect of like I do deals, broker deals with customers via email all the time, now that’s being scraped. Can that be sold to my competitor? Like what are they doing, you know what I mean. I feel that’s a whole privacy discussion.

Thomas

I feel like it’s more for advertisement purposes. Like they are just trying to catch keywords of things that you like or are interested in or just topics in general and then take that and well then advertise to you in their other space with that, so.

Ron

And okay, so let’s talk…so Gmail besides Ben’s weird privacy email…

Thomas

The sweet Proton one?

Ben

[Laughs]

Ron

Yeah. So, Gmail and Outlook are kings of business, right.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

What…Who is the king if you had to…I mean we all read the same stuff, but like I would believe in this business world that Outlook rules the day, but I’m being told I am mistaken for that. And Gmail is like the personal one because it’s always been free, you can have your sister sign up for it for you.

Thomas

Right. Exactly.

Ben

Yeah, I agree.

Thomas

Yeah, I actually agree with that. Outlook integrates better with everything, business-wise, whereas Gmail is much more user friendly for an individual user, but it also provides like the free apps, right so you get the docs, the Google docs and the Google sheets, and all that instead of having to buy it. Like I just got a new laptop and it immediately was like hey you can test office, but you gotta pay for this after X amount of days. Whereas with my Gmail account I can just use it. So, I feel like…

Ben

Now does ope…

Thomas

Nope, go ahead.

Ben

I was going to say now does Outlook or Office 365 also not offer that across the board now for at least their consumers.

Thomas

So, Office 365 does, but the individual user accounts I guess I don’t know if they do, I’ve never really delved into it, but I know if I want to use the applications on my computer, I have to buy those, right.

Ben

Mhm. Okay.

Thomas

So, that’s the other thing is like Gmail doesn’t offer those, but there’s ways around it, I don’t know its kind of a moot point, but for an individual user base I feel like Gmail is the better option, but for companywide Office 365 Outlook.

Ron

So, I’ve had Gmail, but I’ve never used the apps like docs or spreadsheets, or whatever it’s called, I’ve never used them, ever.

Thomas

Really. The only one I’ve used is sheets, I guess…

Ron

What is that their spreadsheet tool?

Thomas

Yeah, yeah exactly. But to be fair I probably use Excel for way more than I should. Like I like it better than Word for managing documents. I’m kinda of a monster like that.

Ron

So, for business though is Gmail cheaper than Outlook? Cause I know Outlook is like $15 a month per user. Is Gmail…what’s Gmail coming in at, anybody know?

Ben

I think it varies…

Thomas

It depends on your licensing so like if you are doing it for a basic license it’s like $6 for Gmail and like $5 for a business essentials from 365, but for like a higher level it ends up being like a 12 to 25 and then it gets like crazier for and Gmail actually ends up being a little bit cheaper, but you don’t get as many features. You don’t get the Office applications instead of…

Ron

Which I think is it gets overlooked a lot of times.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

Because Gmail is cheaper for business, but you don’t get Office and the thing you’re going to run into is if you do business from a B2B aspect, you’re not going to send somebody Google sheet.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

And be like yeah go ahead and check this out, from business to business it’s typically Microsoft applications that most people use.

Thomas

Right.

Ben

Now G Suite can save as Word documents if I remember correctly.

Ron & Thomas

Yeah, yeah.

Ben

So, I don’t know if...

Thomas

Format-wise you can change it.

Ron

So, Ben you’re using G Suite and I send you an Outlook…oh I’m sorry a Word document you can open it up in whatever their Word processor is?

Ben

Yeah, yeah you can.

Ron

Ya know, and the other thing I didn’t like about Gmail when we looked at it, it didn’t have a true folder. Like Outlooks got the folders blah blah blah and then Gmail is like labeling and doing a lot of…

Thomas

Yeah, I hate the algorithms. Even in my regular, personal Gmail I can’t stand it. Umm it’s because I am more use to the folder structure from like Windows, so the fact that just integrates over with Outlook I feel like it’s much more organized whereas in Gmail I’m just trying to figure out how to label things.

Ron

And I would…oh what is it…two versions ago Microsoft came out with the spotlight search thing where you can search all the documents on the computer and the same thing built into Outlook. I love that feature.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

I’ve tried that in my personal Gmail, and it works pretty well, but I feel like it falls short. Like I don’t know if it goes through the trash or not. I just don’t understand it and the platform enough to be comfortable with it.

Thomas

Yeah, I don’t know searches always get weird. There’s always either… it works great or you’ve got indexing issues so.

Ben

Yeah.

Ron

But what I am seeing Ben is I don’t know if you know everything going on here. We are looking at different service desk tools, and sales CRMs, and all that other stuff. A lot of them now are integrating with Gmail uh pretty seamlessly, but now Office that was the thing Office 365 is being something that is being used in the same fashion.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

I imagine that’s happening because it is kind of cut the same way. Like it’s a web app, here are the APIs blah blah blah so on and so forth.

Ben

Yeah.

Thomas

Which I mean, I feel like that’s kind of the future, especially the way Microsoft is pushing their products trying to go more cloud based. So, since Gmail and everything is already there, they’ve already got a leg up on that. So, in the end I don’t know how far in the future I feel like they are going to pull ahead in terms of for new businesses, whereas old businesses are going to stick to what they know. Like Mac users and everything have an easier time using Google applications and Gmail and all that over the Office applications. They just don’t integrate as well.

Ron

I disagree with you on that aspect.

Ben

Yeah.

Ron

I don’t think I see businesses like when G Suite came out a lot like Los Angeles police department was the first big thing, like oh yeah, we are switching to Gmail and then they found out 5 years later they switched back to Outlook.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

Cause they were having so many issues. But I still think that to your point though people are going to still be stuck in like I know how to use Outlook, I know how to use Word, and it’s familiar. I think that kids coming up in school, I mean it’s been awhile for me, but I think they are all using web platform-based products now.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

That’s what they are learning on.

Thomas

Both are actually free to students; you can get office-based applications err the Office integration and all that or the Gmail version and both are free to students like the enterprise stuff.

Ron

Full package?

Thomas

Yeah.

Ron

Aright, scenario. You are going to start a company today what productivity package are you going with? You gonna go with Gmail and the Google Suite or you gonna go with Office 365?

Ben

365.

Thomas

Yeah, I would go with Office 365.

Ron

Yeah, me too. And I would do the why though, I guess let’s explain the why.

Thomas

Ben, you go first.

Ben

Well with how well it integrates with active directory I’m assuming that since I’m starting a business I’m probably going to have and I think it’s really, really I think Thomas mentioned this earlier, right when we were talking you said that yeah Office 365 integrates really well with active directory. So, I would say it’s pretty easy just based on that. Like something pretty seamless and also, I’m more familiar with active directory and I don’t want to re-learn everything just so I can use G Suite. So, I might just be like yeah I’m an old dog I don’t want to learn new tricks.

Thomas

So, yeah that’s kinda my thoughts on it as well. So, I’ve worked with Windows forever I know that integration from like a sys-admin standpoint. Like I work with active directory it’s real simple to use. Managing that with the integration with 365 and being able to use the address sync going across. Everything’s great and I feel that was kind of my point earlier about the people who have used this forever are going to stick with it. And because it integrates so well together there’s not a problem. If you are a massively windows-based users, you’re not going to have as much of an issue with 365 as you would re-learning G Suite or just managing G Suite in general. So, yeah that’s pretty much my reasons, same as yours. It just integrates better, it has a more seamless connection to it, and it offers a lot there’s a lot of space issues that come with G Suite, you run into a lot of I think um correct me if I’m wrong, but Office 365 offers like a terabyte of cloud storage, isn’t that right?

Ben

Yeah.

Thomas

Yeah. Yeah, so that’s a lot for each individual user as part of the license.

Ron

No, I think it goes back to, I think Google tried to really hard to be a one-stop shop and they should’ve took what made Microsoft amazing and like remember we had a customer back in, you guys both weren’t here, we had a customer that was on Gmail and we maintained it for a while to get Outlook contacts to go in they had to run a sync tool all the time because they didn’t quite have the I’m app connectivity or whatever it is, so it just didn’t work and I think that’s the reason why most businesses are successful. And it probably is an ease of use thing like hey I know this program, but I think a lot of it is those weird funky issues on your windows-based computer or on your windows-based network.

Thomas

Right, right absolutely.

Ron

It’s great for your phone, like my Gmail works great on my phone. But my windows now, I think they kinda switched places like um or they are switching spots. Gmail use to be the king of mobile they had a great app blah blah blah. Now, the Outlook app is just fantastic for business…

Thomas

Yeah, I love the Outlook app.

Ron

…Anything else. I think it’s come along way; I don’t even use the native email application that comes on the phone.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

It’s coming a long way and I too, I didn’t weigh in because it’s the same thing I would go with Office Outlook over Gmail simply from me being the privacy guy to being like well are they scraping my information, I feel more comfortable with Microsoft than I do Gmail because or Google excuse me because I know all the evil stuff that goes on there. And again, the lesser of two evils in my mind is Microsoft.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

If you are just going to look at features, so we are going to sit down and say here’s G Suite here’s Office 365 which one has a more robust feature set, in your eyes?

Ben

Robust, hmm.

Thomas

I was going to say I feel like they are both very similar in what they offer. I guess if you were talking like applications, they both have the exact same. Now, whether or not like the quality of the applications and the availability of those applications…

Ron

What would be the G Suite answer to Skype or Teams? Would that be like the G Chat?

Ben

They have chat, yeah.

Thomas

Yeah, they have chat. They’ve got their own version it’s called Teams for them, Google Teams, as well.

Ben

I thought Teams was something else.

Thomas

It’s like their Skype integration kind of thing.

Ron

So.

Ben

Oh, okay.

Ron

To me, that seems clunky because I’ve used their G Chat before, right.

Thomas

I don’t like it, yeah.

Ron

Yeah, no. Email is pretty on par with web mail, where the biggest difference would be the client side of Outlook…

Thomas

Versus the organization and management.

Ron

Because again and I probably could be wrong, but Gmail was born to live in the cloud and now currently Office 365 does both.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

So, and I don’t foresee…

Ben

I think the biggest strength that Microsoft has is at the core of the app. Like every secondary app seems to be lacking in a way and I think that’s where G Suite or Google kind of steps up, but also Google is very inconsistent with how long it will support an app. I mean what they were going to replace Gmail with inbox...and inbox died. There was rumors of Hangouts going away.... And it all just, it’s all very if they stick to something, they are very good at it, but if they don’t stick to it, it’s just a little too inconsistent for my taste.

Thomas

So, you’re saying that you think that Microsoft has better secondary apps? Or are you saying…

Ben

I think that Microsoft has better core apps.

Thomas

So then….so yeah like by secondary apps what do you mean like…

Ben

I would say like uh Flow, or what is the one where you can automate the apps?

Thomas

That’s Flow.

Ben

Or Planner. Is that Flow, oh right. Flow, Planner, Yammer.

Ron

[Laughs] Well let’s…go ahead…

Ben

They have one for like just internally hosting videos, so it’s kind of like a YouTube alternative for a business.

Thomas

Right.

Ben

I don’t think those are great. I don’t entirely get the purpose of Microsoft...and things like that.

Thomas

Gotcha, okay. So, do you think it’s just because people haven’t found a good use for them yet or do you actually think the features inside of those programs aren’t great?

Ben

Uh I think it’s a bit of both. I think Microsoft is playing around with ideas, and here is something else that we’ve made, and we would love your feedback on it, but I don’t necessarily know if...release to the public.

Thomas

Right.

Ben

A lot of what Gmail does well is also things that they released for oh yeah...I think that’s how G Suite got its start. And we’ve got a great service for consumers and we are just going to make it a business.

Ron

That’s a good point because that’s how I feel about the whole suite itself, like it was meant to be something I would use at home and now we are trying to shoehorn it into business. But, do you think the factors such as employees ages or corporate v. startup companies should play into effect whether you are choosing Office 365 or G Suite?

Ben

No.

Thomas

You say should, I don’t think should, but maybe…

Ron

I guess a better way to phrase it, do you think they do play a part?

Thomas

Yeah, like um they will say something like if it looks sleeker.

Ron

Oh yeah, I’m big on that.

Thomas

Yeah, so a lot of people will just pick something because it looks sleeker and not think about the way it integrates with what they are using um which has been countless issues that we have dealt with is yeah it looks great but ya know if you use it a whole month just to get it working, is it worth your time?

Ron

Lipstick on a pig, baby.

Thomas

Exactly, exactly.

Ron

I don’t know I think we’ve had a lot of companies that we have converted from Gmail over to Office 365 and you asked them why they chose that platform and they say it was cost-effective at the time and we just kind of dealt with the downfalls. You know the Google drive is great people love it but now it’s clunky, and sheets, and whatever all the other stuff is, is difficult but I think it does have more to play than what we think.

Thomas

Yeah, no I would agree with that.

Ben

Now I forget is G Suite newer than Office 365 or is Office 365 newer than G Suite, which one is I know both are...because I was...both took off.

Thomas

I believe G Suite came first over Office 365.

Ben

Oh, okay. I just remember hating 365 in like 2014.

Thomas

365 came off of Exchange online didn’t it? Wasn’t that…

Ron

Yeah, so and you can buy the stack, it’s going to be boring, but you can purchase the Azure stack from Microsoft as service providers and we can provide everybody with all the software, right.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

So essentially, it’s the same thing we just can’t like there’s not really a service provider for Google it’s just what they do. I mean a lot of our companies, even one of our bigger competitors in town they use predominantly G Suite applications, they like the Gmail company. Okay, so we have to come to a conclusion and we’ve already talked about it, but are we all still pro Office 365 over Gmail? If you had to make a brand-new company, somebody is sitting across the table from you, you have a 30-second sales pitch for your pick, who wants to go first?

Thomas

A 30-second sales pitch for why…

Ron

Yeah, like why they should go with Office 365 or Gmail.

Thomas

I mean yeah, I would say Office 365 just for the integration purposes and ease of use and you would just be able to get going right away and everything would be pretty smooth.

Ron

I think the price point too and what you get for it. Ben, do you want to give it a try?

Ben

Yeah.

Ron

You going to be the contrarian.

Ben

Yeah, I can play devil’s advocate here. Imagine all the fun of Google.

Ron & Thomas

[Laughs]

Ben

For business.

Thomas

I mean that is something we didn’t touch on for that is with the Google usage you do get their search engine for your stuff, which is kind of cool they do have the best search engine. But I guess I just made the biggest moot point of this whole thing is yeah, they’ve got a great search engine, but is that all you really need?

Ben

Uh didn’t Google also sell hardware for a time? Didn’t they sell a server that could be used for business as well.

Ron

Yes, and it was bright yellow.

Ben

Yeah [laughs].

Thomas

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Ben

Did that integrate with G Suite at all.

Ron

Yeah, that was like its whole thing it was an SBS competitor.

Thomas

I guess if one of the…we’re trying to conclude, but I’m bringing up other points. If you are using Chrome-base devices or if like Google Chrome itself is really like your prominent web browser, G Suite does give you better management features for those specifically, so if you’re like purely like Chrome tablets and using Chrome as your browser you have a lot more control, especially and you can integrate your Android phones and everything like that to it too. So, if that’s your whole company than maybe that’s your one aspect where G Suite would come out ahead.

Ron

Step out ahead. But, the problem with any Google Chrome device is that they are wolfly underpowered.

Thomas

Oh, yeah. No, they are terrible.

Ron

Because you are only expected to run those a handful of apps that they provide from the cloud, so I had a potential prospect that was like hey we are all Chromebooks.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

I would say you immediately have to switch out all your equipment. It’s $300 I get that, but I can’t do anything with it.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

Alls you can do is…

Thomas

Super lite client.

Ron

Yeah.

Ben

What’s their use case then, like were they doing a lot of heavy work? Because I also think Google allows you to rent I think uh hardware, not hardware, but space on a server to run something a little more __.

Ron

Yeah, so they do, they have hosting space to kind of compete with Azure, which they kind of left in the dust this last year because we, Microsoft got the government, U.S. government contract that they are trying to squash right now, but um they got that so they kind of developed a little more that’s why Azure took off with all the security and stuff.

Ben

Uh-huh.

Ron

No, I think the biggest use case for Chromebooks is Google for a college or classroom setting where you just want devices that you can reset and somebody can log in and have all their stuff pretty much immediately because it is going to switch hands a lot. I men that’s a huge benefit of these Chromebooks is if you put them, we when I worked in education, you put them in a classroom I sit down and use it, I put it back in the cart to charge, Thomas comes in logs in with Thomas’ email, it gets all his stuff ready to go and so on and so forth throughout the class periods. But now they are doing like um that’s kind of scaled out too and now they are doing iPads for kids and it’s all, that kind of landscape is always changing.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

I would be interested to see though what schools are using currently because they are everchanging, they are a large platform that changes consistently every year. New students in, old students out. I would be interested to see what they are doing; I know when I left the school district, they were transitioning over to Exchange…

Thomas

Right.

Ron

But I don’t know if stayed on it, that would be something…

Thomas

You know a lot are starting to go to tablets and iPads and I’m always impressed that these school systems are using these $1,000 devices just giving them to students.

Ron

Well the other issue with that for me is they don’t do anything to manage those devices and they don’t do anything to protect your kids.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

So, you read about…

Ben

Well, I think…

Ron

Go ahead.

Ben

Th iPads…mobile devices for iPads is little difficult because I don’t know if Apple gives you a lot. I think their alternative is good, but. Don’t know if they are working with providers. Like yeah, I want to do the same thing and I think I’m going to do it, but I don’t think Apple is really giving them a lot to go on there. I think a good comparison would be if you are in an all Apple environment then would you go with Microsoft Office or G Suite? A mutual playing field there, how about that.

Ron

I see what…I used…my recommendation would be Office 365.

Thomas

Really?

Ron

I used it for a short time I didn’t have a computer and I used the MacBook and Outlook was pretty comparable.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

The biggest issues I had that was the buttons weren’t the same and that’s on me because I didn’t understand the device well enough, but it functioned as it should, like as a Windows experience would be.

Thomas

Sure. I would go with G suite just for the Mac users personally. Or uh Gmail set up. Office 365 does have great integration with it, you can use the applications. Um I just find the less I have to do on the actual computer and the more web-based stuff that I can do is easier and I guess in that aspect if I am just doing that Office 365 does have that ability, so uh yeah I guess it’s a tossup.

Ron

Yeah, I don’t think it’s that far of a… what’s the word I’m looking for, I was going to say disparigy, but that’s not the right word. That’s not even a word I don’t think. Um it’s not that big of a gap anymore. Now that Office 365 is fully launched, features are rich, I think it’s a much smaller gap and if you look at pricing and what the industry itself is using, it’s kind of tough not to go to Windows or Microsoft excuse me.

Thomas

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Ben

If this conversation would have happened like 3 or 4 years ago it would probably be different because right now everything is very comparable, and I think very nice.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

No, I 100% agree with that because when they launched G Suite it was like holy shit this was next level and then you are like you can do all this stiff in the cloud, you don’t have to have a computer anymore, you can share devices, cool cool cool. And then Microsoft announced like 4 or 5 years ago that they were pulling off SBS boxes and they were doing it because they wanted everybody to go to Office 365 and that forced a lot of changes and that also forced their platform to get better quicker.

Thomas

Right.

Ron

I mean sure they were behind the game with the phone apps and shit but you’re not going to type a word document up on your phone, most people won’t. I’m not saying everybody won’t, but most people won’t.

Thomas

Some will.

Ron

So, I think it’s very comparable. Alright, well I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to The Geek Freaks Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, Apple, Google, and all other platforms or subscribe to our email newsletter so you get the updates whenever we do this record it and post it, you’ll get an email saying hey it’s up and tune in for next week’s episode. Ben, I appreciate it, thanks for jumping on the call with us and we will talk to you soon bubba.

Ben

Thanks for having me.

Thomas

Yeah, see ya Ben.

Ben

Yeah, see ya too.