Care to expand on this rather than draw a baseless analogy?

Have you used Google Docs collaboratively with another person? While I type, I see what you're typing.

If you instead use Excel files stored on the network, and you and I want to "collaborate" on a document, at best we're ping-ponging the file back and forth to each other. Sometimes we collide, and have to Merge - which is very painful if we've made any kind of extensive changes.

Suggesting Sharepoint / SVN is a reasonable solution to how to collaborate is like suggesting one telegraph system over another. It's not remotely the same thing, at all.

Office 365 is much better, granted. But the SkyDrive interface is no better (and in many ways worse) than Google Docs.

Yeah I have actually. It's horrible and really unreliable when document sizes get realistic (40+ pages). Not only that it's so easy to fuck up the document structure badly.

I wouldn't use Excel files on a network. I'd use a database or chuck the xlsx into SVN. Changes to complex data need to be managed. Don't expect miracles. There are edge cases where Google Docs will get this wrong. Sync needs human decisions made occasionally.

See my other comments about usage of SVN/Sharepoint and the use cases.

Office 365 is sharepoint. Skydrive is actually a variety of sharepoint. The interface isn't great but neither is google docs, which is why larger companies tend to just use Sharepoint Workspace which is a desktop app for accessing sharepoint portals.

I've never seen any of the unreliability you're talking about, and I've very rarely had a document structure get messed up.

It's like you're reviewing a completely different product from the one I've used daily, for years.