At that time Google Apps had a limited availability, and also hardly anyone had been hearing of the hosted applications provider Zoho. IBM has not released its free productivity software yet, Symphony, while many of the people have liked the idea of the OpenOffice.org, the compatibility issues with the other applications has kept it on the margins of the most mainstream office environments.

The things that have changed since then, and in those things Google poses a real threat to the Office stronghold of Microsoft more than any of the other companies posing. In over two years, the Google Apps have made their headway in business market, especially among the small businesses which does not need all of the advanced functionality that Office offers and which prefer Google's $50 for one user, per year price.

The Google Apps, having much of the functionality which most business users need in Office but it also adds the document sharing as well as the collaboration features which Office does not have, is now used by thousands of the business users as said by a Google spokesman Andrew Kovacs.