Google takes pot shots at Microsoft's Office 365

Microsoft plans to officially launch its cloud-based Office 365 software suite on Tuesday but one of its main rivals decided today to launch a bit of a preemptive strike against the software's launch. In a post on Google's official blog site, the company's Apps Project Manager Shan Sinha claims that he has 365 reasons to consider using Google Apps instead. He falls far short of reaching that number (by 361 reasons in fact) but he gets his point across that Microsoft's upcoming software tools have some flaws compared to Google Apps.

Sinha claims that Google Apps lets its users "work with multiple people in the same document." Also while Office 365 is based around PCs with the Windows operating system, Google Apps "are designed to work well on any device, on any operating system." Office 365 also will have multiple versions with various price points while Google Apps have just one edition and one price; $5 per user. Ultimately Sinha states, "You can't just take legacy, desktop software, move some of it to a data center and call it 'cloud.' Apps was born for the web and we've been serving hundreds of millions of users for years."

Microsoft is scheduled to hold a press event in New York City on Tuesday morning to officially launch Office 365. The specific location for the press event will be the Skylight Soho which is also the same location that Microsoft used a few years ago to officially launch Windows 7. Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer will be in attendance.