Google executives gave an update on how well their attack on one of Microsoft's most important businesses is going:
Pretty well.
Google executives say the company is getting over 1,800 signups per week for its $10 per user/per month Google Drive for Work cloud service.
This service gives users unlimited cloud storage, email, and access to what used to be called Google Docs, its alternative apps to Microsoft Office, i.e. a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, etc.
Google's chief business officer, Omid Kordestani, explained:
Finally, we’re seeing remarkable momentum in our newer non-ads businesses, whether it’s Play, Hardware or Google For Work, we continue to see strong growth and we’re thrilled to be a platform for our partners' successes as well.
For businesses, what was called Google Enterprise, is now simply Google for Work. This business has great traction. In addition to the tremendous growth in our [Google Play] apps business, we have more than 1,800 signups for Google Drive for Work every week. Plus there are almost 250 million active Google Drive users, including consumer, education and business users.
That's not to say that these people have completely ditched Microsoft Office.
When Google first announced this new pricing, it also admitted that many of the documents that people store in Google Drive are actually Microsoft Office documents.
But it's working on that. Google acquired a startup that made an app called Quickoffice back in 2012. Quickoffice lets you work on Office documents on iPads and Android devices.
When Google launched the new Drive for Work in June, it baked Quickoffice into the service so that people could create Office-compatible documents, or edit them, right from Drive on their Android or Chrome devices.
Meanwhile, Microsoft says its Google Drive killer, the cloud version of Office known as Office 365, is doing well, too. In July, it said it had 5.6 million users of its two consumer versions, Home and Personal.
It didn't release numbers for its business users, but Microsoft is set to announce earnings next week, and we expect to hear an update then.
