Google Capitalizes on Microsoft Outages With Tools to Switch Over

Google is escalating its battle with Microsoft for corporate customers, adding two new products designed to keep businesses online if Microsoft 365 productivity software goes out of service.

Google Workspace, Google’s suite of cloud-based tools, is rolling out two new services to help businesses that currently use Microsoft products. One will automatically sync email and files so that employees can switch to Gmail and Drive during a Microsoft outage. The other, a full migration package, bundles Google tools with the company’s partners — such as identity-management firms Okta and JumpCloud — to help enterprises leave Microsoft’s ecosystem entirely.

The launch marks the latest phase in a years-long rivalry between Google and Microsoft over the future of office software — a battle now defined as much by AI and cloud infrastructure as by emails and spreadsheets. Microsoft still dominates the corporate market, but Google has long tried to chip away at its lead. Nowadays, both companies are racing to embed AI assistants into every office task, from drafting emails to analyzing internal company data.

Google is positioning these new products, announced Thursday by its cloud unit, as the solution to Microsoft’s “architectural brittleness,” according to Ganesh Chilakapati, a director of product management for Google Workspace.

The company said its goal is to offer clients a more resilient backbone for the AI workplace, which it contends its biggest rival has failed at. As generative AI tools become embedded in routine office work, Google is arguing that outages and security breaches carry far higher stakes — not just financial losses, but the potential to freeze automated workflows and decision systems that now drive business operations.

Google tells clients it may have an advantage because it builds its own AI models, runs them on its in-house chips, and integrates them directly into Workspace apps, which means it can deliver generative AI tools efficiently, without the add-on costs that come with relying with outside vendors. Google has the third-biggest cloud business, after Amazon.com Inc.’s and Microsoft’s.