Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365: A Core Feature Comparison

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Regardless of your industry, software for word processing, spreadsheets, video conferencing, and cloud storage are basically table stakes for any functional business in 2026. And while it's the newest tech of the bunch, many would argue that a good generative AI tool is now just as essential.

Understanding how crucial this mix of applications is to modern business, some companies package them into one product category: the cloud-based productivity suite. And there are two main players that fully dominate the cloud-based productivity suite market: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.

For businesses, deciding between Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 can be daunting. Both products provide the main mix of apps you need for modern business, but there are key differences in how the tools within them work, how intuitive they are to use, and the specific features included.

But don't worry, we're here to help you make an informed choice between the two. Here's a rundown of the core features that are most important to the typical knowledge worker.

Documents: Google Docs vs. Microsoft Word

Does anyone at your company write? Or ever need to create or edit a document? Of course they do. Word processing tools are one of the most essential products businesses depend on.

Google Docs and Microsoft Word provide a lot of the same valuable features:

• Sharing: You can share your documents with other people, who can provide suggested edits and comments.
  
• Suggestions: Get grammar, spelling, and wording suggestions from built-in tools, including generative AI.
  
• Devices: Both work well on desktop and mobile devices, and let you access the most current version of your docs when moving between devices.
  
• Images and tables: Within both tools, you can insert or create images and tables to further illustrate concepts.
  
• Version history: Don't worry about losing old wording or formatting. In both tools, you can pull up an old version of a document if you decide you liked a previous edit better.
  
• Templates: Both tools provide templates for common document types to help you get started fast.
  
• Prompts: If you want to move even faster than with templates, you can write a prompt describing what you want, and let the product's AI create a starter version of your doc.

Those features can get you far whichever option you choose, but here’s some of how they differ:

Google Docs:

• Collaboration features: While both tools provide some options for sharing, commenting, and editing documents collaboratively, Google Docs is better designed for collaboration. It lets people provide emoji reactions along with comments, color codes the edits from different people, and syncs updates in real time.
  
• Smart chips: Docs also lets you add smart, clickable features to your docs by simply adding an @ before a colleague's name, a date, or another file you want to reference.
  
• Document tabs: For documents that get long and unwieldy, Docs provides organizational features. You can create different tabs and navigate the document more easily via a menu on the left side of the screen.
  
• Ease of use: In general, Google Docs has a reputation for being intuitive and easy to use. Part of that is a simple user interface design, and part is additional ease-of-use features like automatically autosaving changes to the cloud and letting you create templated "building blocks" for any information you'd otherwise have to re-type frequently (like your bio, address, or company's unique value proposition).

Microsoft Word

• More templates and formatting options: While Google Docs does offer templates and formatting options, Microsoft Word offers more of them and more powerful options. Figuring out how to use the more powerful features is harder and thus mostly for more advanced users. But for people who want more advanced options, Word has them.
  
• Track changes: Where Docs is great for real-time collaboration, Word tends to work better for use cases where precision is especially important and people need to be able to move documents back and forth in the editing process (rather than working on them together in real time). Many legal and publishing professionals, for instance, swear by Word as a better option for their needs than Docs.
  
• Editor: If you want more advanced writing suggestions, Microsoft's Editor tool is an AI-powered writing assistant that offers recommendations for clarity, conciseness, and inclusiveness.
  
  

Spreadsheets: Google Sheets vs. Microsoft Excel

Organizing and analyzing data plays a huge role in business, which makes spreadsheet software another core feature of the modern business tech stack.

Some essential features both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have in common include:

• Built-in formulas and tables: Some of the most common formulas and table types come built into the software, to help you set up equations and handle data formatting faster.
  
• Auto-fill capabilities: For sequenced data, a spreadsheet can automatically fill in cells with the appropriate values, saving you the trouble.
  
• Sorting and filtering: Both tools make it easy to sort and filter the data in your spreadsheets as needed.
  
• Data visualizations: Use either product to make more sense of your data visually via charts, graphs, and other visualizations.
  
• Prompts: With AI tools included, you can craft prompts to create formulas, change formatting, and help with data analysis — extending the functionality of the product.

Sheets:

• Collaboration: As with Docs, real-time collaborative features are one of the big differentiators of Sheets. Co-workers can make edits, comments, and chat within Sheets in real time, and you can assign tasks to specific people within a sheet. Individual users can also create filter views specific to their preferences.
  
• Ease of use: Sheets has an uncluttered, user-friendly interface and toolbar system, which makes it intuitive to learn and use. It also has autosave functionality, and easy-to-access version history.
  
• Connection with other apps: Sheets connects seamlessly with other apps in Workspace. You can use smart chips to pull in information from Docs, Cal, or other apps by using the @ symbol, or ask Gemini to pull in information from other sources within Workspace.
  
• Advanced functions: Sheets offers a few advanced functions that set it apart from Excel. Several IMPORT functions can pull data from outside sources in real time, along with GOOGLEFINANCE, which pulls live financial data from the web. The QUERY function also gets high points from users for being an especially powerful and versatile way to manipulate your data.

Excel

• Advanced automation features: Excel's pivot tables can analyze complex datasets and automate complicated calculations. Power Query can connect to outside sources, extract data, and automate data transformation and preparation. And Excel's macros feature lets you record and re-use repetitive actions, to save how much time you spend on manual tasks.
  
• Powerful data analysis and visualization: Where Sheets may win on usability, Excel provides more powerful options for data analysis and visualization — at least for those who know how to use its advanced features. Excel provides more chart types and subtypes, can perform more complex calculations, and has more tools for analyzing data trends and generating visual representations of data.
  
• Large data sets: Excel also has the capability to handle bigger data sets without crashing. Where Sheets can handle 10 million cells or so before lagging, Excel can handle millions of rows without issue.
  
  

Communication: Google Meet vs. Microsoft Teams

Ever since the pandemic ushered in an era of frequent virtual meetings, video conferencing software has become a necessity for every business. Both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 include their own version of a virtual meeting software: Google Meet and Microsoft Teams.

Both tools provide some main functionality:

• Schedule and hold video meetings: Stay connected with your colleagues via real-time video meetings that include now-standard features like adding personalized backgrounds, live chat, screen sharing, and emoji reacts.
  
• Captions: Both tools now include the valuable accessibility feature of live meeting captions, along with translations for when you're meeting with people across countries and languages. Meet provides translations in 65+ languages, Teams in 35.
  
• Recordings: Both tools let you create recordings of your meetings, and transcripts and AI-generated notes and summaries.

Meet:

• Simple and intuitive: As is the theme with Google Workspace, Meet offers a cleaner interface that makes features easy to understand and use.
  
• Better for external users: If you regularly meet with people outside of your organization, Meet’s the easier option. They won't have to download software, as the tool runs in any browser. And it works the same for internal and external users.
  
• Integrates with other apps: You can use Meet seamlessly within other Workspace apps. Start a meet from within a doc, sheet, or presentation without having to move to a separate tab or platform.

Teams:

• Full workplace: Teams goes beyond just providing meeting capability, it combines multiple collaboration features in one tool. That includes: persistent chat (not just during the meeting), shared team file storage, calendars, and task management.
  
• Better record keeping: Teams doesn't just allow you to chat and share files during a meeting, it saves what you've said and shared so you can continue to access it afterward.
  
• Collaboration options: Teams offers channels, threads, and communities to help you connect to co-workers in multiple formats — synchronous and asynchronous — within the same tool.
  
  

Storage & Offline Access

Cloud storage solutions have enabled businesses to replace the huge filing cabinets that once took up valuable office space (and were a pain to keep organized). Naturally, both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 include cloud storage as part of their business plans.

The products each offer the essentials you'd expect:

• Centralized storage option: Both tools give you one main (virtual) place to store all your files — both your personal files, as well as any shared files for the business.
  
• Access across devices: Both cloud storage tools let you move between multiple devices, providing access to the most current version of the files you need on mobile and desktop alike.
  
• Organizational and search features: Both products provide basic features to help you organize your files intuitively, and offer a search function to more quickly pull up the just-right file within moments.

Google Drive

• More space: Depending on the specific plan you choose, Drive starts at 15GB of storage and goes up to 5TB per user (compared to Microsoft's 1TB).
  
• Powerful search functionality: Google Drive's search functionality is powerful and easy to use, so you should have no trouble finding the files and folders you need. In addition to the standard search feature, Drive also now provides AI-generated summaries of documents and information retrieval from within your files.
  
• Shared Drives: While each individual user can create, store, and share files as they please on their own Drive, you also have the option to create Shared Drives, where everything is accessible to a specific set of people, such as a particular department. Since Shared Drives are owned by the company, they can help you ensure you maintain access to your resources when individual employees leave.

OneDrive and SharePoint

• Local file syncing: Where Drive is designed to prioritize cloud storage (although they do let you save files locally as well), OneDrive makes it easier to automatically save files to your local device for full offline access. It can automatically sync your files to keep them up to date, and maintain the file structure you use in the cloud.
  
• SharePoint agents: SharePoint has AI agents that can quickly retrieve information from within your library of files. Agents can answer specific questions about the information in your files, as well as providing summaries or notable insights included within your resources.
  
  

AI Tools: Gemini vs Copilot

The biggest update to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 in recent years is the addition of AI tools. 88% of business users in a recent survey said they're adopting AI tools, making these an increasingly important part of both products. You can find a deeper dive on Gemini vs Copilot in our earlier post, but here are some highlights on how they compare.

To start, they share some of the basic functionality you likely already associate with generative AI:

• Chat-based insights: With both Gemini and Copilot, you can use natural language to ask questions or give commands. The tools can pull information from your library of files to answer questions, or complete actions for you to help speed up your work processes (e.g. "create a visualization based on the data in spreadsheet A")
  
• Works with other product apps: Both generative AI tools are heavily integrated into the other product apps. As we've touched on in other sections, you can use the AI functionality within Word, Docs, Sheets, Excel, and the other tools in each product suite.

Gemini

• Multi-modal: Gemini can handle multiple formats — and even do so simultaneously. You can create or work on images, video, and text, and use Gemini to generate images directly within apps like Docs and Slides. Workspace also offers Google Vids, an AI video creation app.
  
• Drill down into your files: You probably have a huge library of files. Gemini can drill down into entire folders of data and PDFs 1,500 pages long in order to answer your questions about the content within them.
  
• Autonomous workflows: The enterprise version of Gemini can help you build and run workflows that handle a sequence of tasks for you, taking work off employees' plates.

Copilot

• Adds deep functionality to apps: Copilot has a deep, logical understanding of the legacy Office apps and is designed to extend the functionality of each. For example, in Excel you can use simple text prompts to create complex formulas, pivot tables, and data visualizations.
  
• Meeting summaries: Copilot is also great at summarizing Teams meetings, even in real time. If you show up late, it can catch you up with a quick summary of what you missed.
  
• Copilot Pages: Microsoft's Copilot Pages feature lets you turn AI responses into a page you can work with. You can pull information from disparate sources, like emails, Word docs, and meeting transcripts into one collaborative canvas to build on as you choose.
  
  

Choosing between Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365

Deciding which cloud-based productivity app is the best choice for your business depends on your needs and priorities.

Consider whether collaboration features and ease of use are more important to you than the more advanced features some Microsoft apps offer. Think through which functionality is most valuable for your needs and consider consulting employees in various departments to learn what they prefer and why. With the sizable role these apps play in the typical knowledge workers’ day, the choice you make will have a notable impact on how your business runs.

If you decide to go with Google Workspace, you can get more out of it by working with experienced Workspace consultants. Get in touch to learn more.