Google Docs experienced some brief downtime earlier today, but the timing could not have been better for Microsoft. Today, the company launched a new campaign to promote its Office brand of productivity software against that of Google's cloud-based services.

The campaign includes two new videos that feature actor Rob Schneider (yes, he of Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo fame) portraying the role of "Google Docs". In the first video, Google Docs is playing on a three man basketball team (which includes Christopher Reid, better known as "Kid" of the hip hop act Kid 'n Play) against another team with "Microsoft Office", which proceeds to take the Google Docs team down hard on the court.

The idea behind the video is that companies that use Google Docs, in Microsoft's opinion, have to do more work to get things done compared to working with Office. In a corresponding blog post, Microsoft says that people that use Google Docs " ... have to find ways to overcome feature gaps by working harder, spending their time finding workarounds, or potentially using third-party tools to overcome the gaps."

The second video has Google Docs as a gambling dealer who promises a shiny gold keychain to someone who can open up a Office document in Google Docs without any loss of data or formatting. Naturally, the poor person (played by The Joe Schmo Show host Ralph Garman) loses that bet. The end of the video has a surprise cameo by someone who got into a bit of trouble with his own gambling in real life.

Again, Microsoft has a related blog post that talks about how documents that are made with Office 2013 look different when converted and viewed with Google Docs, Google Quickoffice or in the recently launched beta of the Chrome Office Viewer. But let's face it; these two new Google Docs videos are, well, very funny.

Source: Microsoft Office blog and Office on YouTube