Yes, “I am trying to be a good Microsoft citizen” and you can say that I’m biased and this is yet another marketing campaign, however it is not. If you ask me, my personal opinion in the area of e-mail, documents and sharing information will be simple: Live rocks & Google … lets say is not that good Smile.

This started, when one of my friends (he’s an IT guy, who supports small businesses) said that he moved someone’s mail to google, because: it is available, free and is accessible via web. Hey, c’mon, have you considered all options and pros/cons of those options?

First things first: you can move your domain to live as well and have e-mail there (yeah, the hotmail one). Comparing just the e-mail options, I’d say they are either comparable or (to my experience) Live is even better:

  • Both are catching SPAM good, however the Live SPAM box is either empty or with just few message to check for – I like this approach.
  • Both are providing vast space for your e-mail. While at this moment gmail claims that I have some 7+GB of storage, Live mail gives you more than enough storage to keep your e-mails as long as you play nicely
  • Both have flagging, quick views, contacts, calendars, etc.

Now there comes another part into the play: creating & sharing information – yes, documents. And this point I’d say today Microsoft is beating Goo very hard.

  • First you can use Live Skydrive to create & store office documents, pictures (well, whatever legal) and it is 25GB of storage separate from e-mail. Nice. Far more than additional 2GB in total from Google
  • And yes, office web apps available for personal use for free in skydrive, which is almost too good to be true, but it is
  • Why office web apps are better than Gdocs? Well, take a look and there are more things. I mean creating, editing, sharing – works and it works both on your desktop and on the web pretty much the same way. You can check my [old presentation online](http://cid-dcdc5e439e70339d.office.live.com/view.aspx/Presentations/Microsoft Solutions Framework - VU.pptx).
  • Look and feel is the same – I love it. Microsoft is keeping its promise to provide the same services for businesses and consumers, multiple device types.

To summarize, if I would start small business now in Lithuania, I’d probably go for Live services, because I think it is better option at the moment.