Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates makes a point while speaking to students at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California February 19, 2008.

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhuanet) -- The world's largest software marker Microsoft will begin offering its online business services including Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, to companies of all sizes, no longer limiting them to those with more than 5,000 users.

"We expect by the end of this year, if this all goes well, we'll have a general availability of a subscription type service for both SharePoint and Exchange," said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates as quoted by media reports Tuesday.

Gates also said the company's Search Serve Express is available now as a free download.

The services let businesses access software through a subscription service or onsite servers or both.

Gates said competitor Google Inc. -- which recently unveiled free service that serves as a challenge to SharePoint -- doesn't "understand the special needs of business."

"If you'd seen what the Google tools that have tried to do productivity type things (do), they really don't have the richness, the responsiveness," he said. "for most of these Google products, to be frank, the day they announce them is their best day."

In response to a question about how the impact of Microsoft's possible acquisition of Yahoo Inc. on SharePoint, Gates said he doesn't think there will be any.