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Microsoft's retort to Google Apps...

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And Microsoft hits back with a 'top ten' of why Google Apps is such a bad idea for enterprise...

Couple of the points stood out amongst the (fairly poor) FUD:

"4. Google’s primary focus is on ad funded search. Their enterprise focus and now apps exist on the very fringe and in combination with other fringe services only account for 1% of the company’s revenue. What happens if Google executes poorly? Do they shut down given it will them in a minimal and short term way? Should customers trust that this won’t happen?"

That's a pretty good point...although the billions in cash as a result of all those ads should keep them going for a while..

"6. Google apps don’t have essential document creation features like support for headers, footers, tables of content, footnotes, etc. Additionally, while customers can collaborate on basic docs without the above noted features, to collaborate on detailed docs, a company must implement a two part process – work together on the basic doc, save it to Word or Excel and then send via email for final edits. Yes they have a $50 price tag, but with the inefficiencies created by just this one cycle, how much do GAPE really cost – and can you afford the fidelity loss?"

What? They're highlight the inneficiency of emailing MS Office docs back and forth, and argue that reducing this process through collaborating on an early stage version adds complexity. Great argument.

I would have thought MS would have spent weeks crafting a extremely tight response against this sort of announcement...it feels like these counterpoints are the results of a stressed morning's emailed chain.