where are the ‘Google has no product strategy’ people, now?

i can’t imagine anyone wanting to go toe to toe with either google or ms, but both??

i don’t buy any of the ‘good for consumers’ stuff. as soon as google crushes microsoft, then consumers will be out in the cold again. any ‘good for consumers’ time periods are quickly followed by ‘bad for consumers’ stretches that are 20x as long.

p.s. everytime a TechCrunch sponsor is promoted on this blog, it should be accompanied with a full disclosure - every single time, inline, right there. this should include, at a minimum, current sponsors.

i suspect many others want/expect the same, but most won’t want to offend then guy who can sink their company with an offhand comment - so they’ll remain silent.

While it’s true that customers want their documents stored on servers, I think a vast majority of businesses want their documents stored on their own servers. I’m sure there is a market here for certain businesses to go the Google route, you need just look at Scoble’s posts about Podtech’s reliance on Google apps. That said, I think most companies would think more than twice before letting their documents sit outside their domain. I know I would.

Yes I believe Y! will also participate this market by acquiring Zoho. However Zoho doesn’t seem very well organized, all apps seem like they’re independently built. Zimbra also deserves considering.

>> I think a vast majority of businesses want their documents stored on their own servers.

me too.

Peter - You are right. Google is a partner to TechCrunch. I use their adsense, analytics and checkout products…a lot of our revenue come through them.

John, I agree…if you are right, then Microsoft will win those customers, not Google.

So, except for maybe gmail and calendar, are any of the other products in wide use? There’s a lot of hype around collaborative documents, but how much more collaborative do you need when you can just email the document to someone, have them annotate it, and send it back? While it’s a dated paradigm, I’m not sure if people are interested in changing.
That, of course, is a statement made with no product research or market data…more just a question.

Google could deliver its online office to those companies in hardware.
They did the same for search appliance - why not for their office….
“google office mini”

A purely browser-based collaborative office suite would lower initial backoffice costs for Philippine startups, in a country where most Internet access is via cybercafés.

#7 Alec,

You’re absolutely right. You can still write your document out by hand on a piece of paper, then strap the paper on to a pigeon, and have the faithful bird fly it out to your collaborator, and have him do the same.

Sheesh, these Google people, why do they even bother?

Like most things, it has it’s place. I use writely in combination with word. I don’t know why, but when I want to jot something down and keep it, I’ll use writely.

The ‘office suite’ seems much more useful for small companies. It’s free, it has great email, and the document collaboration with your remote workers or contractors is a common need.

Cool, GMail hosted users already get this stuff - no need to re apply.

Errr anyone ever heard of Sharepoint? How about Sarbanes-Oxley? There’s no way any serious business will look twice at this product from Google.

Environments who would benefit from this offering are probably too small to need online document collaboration, or self employed people. And most of all, their business will have little or no regulatory requirements. I don’t imagine Google would be too compliant with audit requests, which generally require answers to questions like ‘who has access to the server?’, ‘how is access controlled’, ‘how often is is backed up, and how long is the information retained for’, ‘who has access to the backup media’ etc etc

Sharepoint Services easily kills this product suite, and it’s included with WIndows 2003 (and the next version will be a free download when Office 2007 drops).

Well, I guess you have missed the main point - i.e. Google Apps for EDucation.
Google is very smartly luring educational institutes. And instead of building just-another social network for students, its giving away all the tools needed to build one. Moreover, this service will include alumnis too (catch-them-young, make sure that these students use your service, and stick to it/promote the service when they join the corporate world!).

Isn’t this the same strategy followed by Microsoft? Or even statistical s/w like SPSS?
More here

More Google hype. I agree with n00dles that Google doesn’t stand a chance of getting a significant customer base with this offering. Security, control, data ownership, etc. are all non-starters for Google’s offering. And Microsoft is so deeply entrenched in the market that shifting away to a less functional offering isn’t going to be considered by 99% of the marketplace.

Additionally, the functionality of Writely and Spreadsheet is so basic as to be laughable. If anybody was offering this besides Google, it wouldn’t even be on the radar. As a small business owner, I wouldn’t consider using Google’s suite because it is so basic. And even though I don’t have sensitive corporate documents and bank numbers for my secret accounts in the Cayman Islands, I wouldn’t give my data to a company which is pretty open about wanting to use every bit of data they get to provide advertising. Google needs to shift away from this advertising focus. There are a plethora of services that businesses are willing to pay for. And in fact, there are many services that people are suspicious about NOT paying for. This is one of them. The old adage “you get what you pay for” is big in business. I can’t tell you how difficult it can be trying to sell open source software solutions to some companies. Many people are skeptical about the quality of things that are free, and when it comes to your company’s documents, frankly they should be.

Michael’s comment that Microsoft is at a “distinct disadvantage” is asinine. Their products are deeply entrenched in the market. Companies, both large and small, have spent tens of billions of dollars, if not more, on Microsoft software. Regardless of their problems, their offering is lot more compelling than what Google is offering. Should Microsoft be arrogant and ignore Google? Of course not, but you show a true lack of business sense by trying to claim that the 1200 pound gorilla has the disadvantage. It is clearly Google that is outgunned here and that faces a significant disadvantage. Like their other failed ventures, I think they’re blowing their wad before they have something people will seriously look at.

So what is acctually new here that wasn’t allready available to gmail for domain customers, we have been using it for a few months now and have talk and calendar. The only thing that has been added is page creator, I understand that is probably a new tac for google and they are revealing there hand a bit, and the education stuff is pretty cool. It also seems somewhat easier to sign up to the beta but it still is in beta right?

that said gmail for domain is brilliant! Our whole organisation was plagued by spam (i have had 600 in the last 4 days) but our old spam software was appaling. gmail picks up pretty much everything, for that alone its been worth it, let alone conversations and all the other bits!

I agree with Business School 101 - and more annoyingly, it is becoming distinctly apparent that Google think the rest of the world is just sitting on their hands and punching the keyboard with their chin.

It is ironic that an organisation that holds so much of the world’s collaborative talent and clear technical superiority, are so entrenched in developing products that they think people will use over Microsoft developed products. I think the World is no longer dominated by a sense of “we hate Microsoft” anymore. They have paid huge sums to make up for their mistakes; their CEO is donating more than 30 billion of his own cash to help charities around the world and in my opinion, is a pretty good bloke.

It is frustrating that in Google’s arrogance, they honestly believe that producing ’spreadsheets’ and ‘word processors’ - that they will beat Microsoft. Furthermore, what I find trying fascinating is the way that the market has not evolved from Microsoft products - but rather just tried to copy them. “Thinking outside the square” - no one has produced a “word processor” that has entirely different functionality, user interface and tools. I often imagine how office collaboration suits would look like if Microsoft hadn’t developed the “window” – you would think Google would have more popularity if it tried to develop something “never seen before” rather than “the same old same old”.

It is painstaking clear that Google are trying to copying a product and adopt a “80% of the world’s market don’t use 80% of the Office Tools, so Microsoft can have the remaining 20% of the market for all we care – we just want the 80%”. Microsoft’s response to this, I believe, should be “Google are trying to copy 80% of Microsoft’s products so they can have 80% of the market, but 80% of Google’s ‘office’ products are unstable, still in ‘beta’ and are generally just…………shithouse”.

Come on Bill – it would be a classic to hear you say it

Is it just me or haven’t we been led to believe that google has the smartest people on the planet and because of not only that but their culture they innovate while we go oh and ah.

This isn’t innovation… it’s copying the competition. When did google go from leading with innovation to striking at the competition with a very much watered down wanna-be version of office (if you can call it that)?

Well, why look at Apps beta in secluded state? This might be a signal for Google’s OS Launch.
The only way Google can beat M$ is to atleast give the same stuff as MS and then play the price game. Can’t an online OS decrease the TCO?

Few argued that a co. will never share their data in an online OS.
Same was heard when salesfoce.com/ariba live was launched - that cos. will never use a web-based CRM/SCM product (how can you put your sales data online?Is it safe?etc) . We all know the result.

Its all about bringing disruption and to me, Google Apps will surely awaken the Vista giant.
More here..

I think everybody needs to remember how small a proportion of people have any idea that Google do more than search.

My friends and colleagues know all about the new toys Google are playing with, but outside of the developers and geeks, nobody I’ve ever talked to has known a thing about Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheet, or Writely.

To be honest, I am still shocked that Writely hasn’t been re-written to fit in with the other Google apps yet. I’m wondering why too.

I find it strange that there’s no mention of Notebook & Reader - I’de really like to see them integrated into the suite…

quote: “This is a bold move by Google. They are striking hard at a nearly $12 billion/year Microsoft revenue stream.” end quoute

Whaaaaaaahaahahahhaa .. sorry, couldn’t control myself …. you call this “striking hard” … Really, you should get some perspective instead of hyping this up.

If this is the Google Office-suite offering … Come-on people … *ploinK*
Ok … enough fun for today, let’s get some serious work done with some serious applications .. hehe …. /sniff /me wipes laughter tears away/

Learn more and discuss Office 2.0 at the upcoming conference:

Oops, sorry, no link in the previous comment, so here’s the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

There is NO doubt that this looks like a gift to small / mid-sized business owners. They can get a free domain name from Microsoft and get free email / web space from Google now. Its just becoming absolutely FREE to do business on Internet. You just have to be tolerant with some ads.

I dont have any problem if ads are displayed on an email account my staff accesses as long as my customer sees the email as “name@company.com”

Doesn’t it sound nice ??? Yes, it DOES, except that it is CRUSHING the web hosting / email hosting market.

What does it mean to Google? They might just loose these advertisers and inturn some of their finance…

But my question is… will losing this hosted service providers’ advertising revenue affect Google’s finance greatly?

Of the $12 billion, Google may manage to get couple of million dollars, that is all to it.

I think the problem is most of the people who are hyping the google office products may have never really used these products.

If you like at writely and compare with WORD, it would be foolishness to say writely competes with WORD. Other than the basic Font,bold, and alignment, it does not have anything. No header/footer, no track changes and none of the so many other.

People hardly care about collabaration in corporate world. The term collaberation is overhyped. If I am preparing a techinical design document along with couple of co workers (say Mark and jonh), there is no need for collabaration really. I contribute to section#1, John contributes to section #2 ,Mark contributes to section#3 and at the end we merge the documents i.e. cut and paste. I dont want John and Mark to see all the changes as I type , I only want them to see my version only after I finish it completely.I hate collaberation.

Only areas Google office will attract is for personal use and may be some small business, both these sections hardly spend any money.

If any of the analysts hypes this up, I wll simply dump the funds that manage.

It’s amazing how many people in this thread don’t get it, both ways.

Google and Microsoft are not competing.

Google is clearly targetting small businesses. Mom and pop shops. Ones that likely don’t have their own server to speak of, and are probably pirating MS Office anyway.

Google isn’t going after enterprise customers, which are Microsoft’s bread and butter. At least not yet. Google is going after everyone in the world who pirates MS Office by offering them a legal alternative for the same price. Google’s suite is probably already functional enough for those people.

And the strategy is pretty clear… it’s focused less on advertising to these users than it is in turning these users into adwords customers. “Hey ma and pa gift card shop - come set up your web site with us (no need to hire anyone to do it!), use base/checkout to put your inventory online, and oh yeah, you can advertise locally with us too!”

THAT’S the billion dollar opportunity here: the long tail of businesses.

And yeah, whoever said there’s no need for collaboration? Please. I work at a small company where 80% of us are telecommuting on any given day. The ability to edit the same document at the same time and have the changes appear instantly on both sides is a godsend.

How about Free Microsoft/Google Office:

a) Without the ads
b) Without the price tag
c) Without giving Google your data
d) Without the TechCrunch review

Is it true?
Can such a product really exist?

It does my friend…..

http://www.openoffice.org/

You people just don’t get it. Google’s making all these apps because every attempt to justify not using Microsoft products gets shot down by the Microsoftie of the bunch saying “but product x doesn’t have Microsoft app y…” New companies are starting every day. Many, many of these businesses have gone Microsoft not because they wanted to, but because even if some of the tools were crap, they had the whole (interoperable) suite.

Gmail+gcalendar+gtalk blows Lotus Bloats out of the frickin’ water in every conceivable performance and usability metric. I want that app to die TODAY.

Noodles: Sharepoint is a dog. As for Sarbanes-Oxley, there are countries outside of the USA.

I’m certainly curious if this strategy may cause a legal case in the future: “when Gmail users send office documents, Google will prompt them to open the documents in Google’s new suite”.

Any attorneys out there with thoughts on this?

The supposition that the primary motivator for customers — especially business customers — is low cost (or free) is specious. Sure, many consumers are willing to opt for getting barraged by ads in exchange for a lower price, but in business the rules are different — and I’m not convinced that over the long haul the consumer won’t pull back from the “let me give up all my privacy to save a couple of bucks” model.

Moreover, consumers are a big enough pool that, even when divided up into interest areas, they represent critical mass for advertising. Businesses don’t (”is this user a decision-maker? for what product(s)? etc.”). Do I want my employees having movie banners thrust at them while they’re working on a document? Doubtful.

What Google has done is to effectively eliminate any competition from start-ups by setting their prices at $zero, because it means that no start-up can actually make money to do things like, say, pay employees or provide a real return-on-investment (other than “sell it to Google”). This effectively stiffles innovation.

They’re simply taking advantage of their size to shift revenue from a high-volume, high-margin activity (search) to low-volume, negative margin activities (almost everything else they’re doing). They’re doing so in the hopes that some of these new ventures will achieve sufficient critical mass to become self-supporting and profitable, which can only happen at massive scale.

Sounds a lot like what MSFT has done for years.

Oh - the other piece that is laughable is the concept that Google can actually do customer support.

All types of customers prefer a good product from a company with great support to a great product with good support. Great support is only rarely delivered, and then only by companies that build it into their DNA from the get-go. If you look at the Google founders, management team, and board, you will not find that DNA.

Consumers may be willing to tolerate crappy support, but businesses will not.

Additionally, the regulatory compliance issues are substantial, as mentioned by Business School 101.

And finally, the products have a LONG way to go to reach parity with the MSFT offerings. If price were the primary customer motivation, this wouldn’t be a problem. But if power, performance, etc. are factored in, it makes this a non-starter.

Long term? Dead pool.

To all the M$ cult members,
Microsoft does not know the first thing about how to write a email client. Just look at Outlook and compare it with GMAIL. Spam is ever present. You lose messages to the spam filter with M$. The search is par with another M$ product MSN, and who uses that ?

To all the people who say just use Sharepoint. Haha very funny. I think it is fairly easy to say until Sharepoint backend is queryable it is no better than googles offering. In fact Google Spreadsheet is more functional that the list functionality in sharepoint. Basically Sharepoint Services is a hodge podge of services that are hide their implementation on the backend.

The Office battle is the only one that is slightly interesting. I have been beta testing the new version of M$ Office at home. It blows Open Office out of the water. But the new features are all nice to have. At M$ pricing many will just live without or burn a copy from a friend.

@JR
“Microsoft does not know the first thing about how to write a email client. Just look at Outlook and compare it with GMAIL. Spam is ever present. You lose messages to the spam filter with M$.”

Email clients and spam filtering can and should be too separate things. Relying on the spam filtering in Outlook is foolish. Also, the idea that MS doesn’t “know the first thing about how to write a email client” is inane. Outlook 2003 is actually a pretty solid product. Especially if coupled with a well run Exchange server.

ugghh…. “should be two” not “should be too”. Saw that right after I clicked submit. Oh well.

I would certainly be willing to give Google or Zoho a try over the more costly alternatives.

Ralph (#32)- all attachments have “View” and “Download” options next to each other. For PDF, “View as HTML” and “Download”. Google likely won’t break that convention for office documents, and that should keep them well clear of any legal trouble.

I think Eric (#28) hit the nail on the head. Google Base + Adsense + Adwords= billions of dollars.

It seems fashionable to praise Zoho on this site these days (can you say advertiser, anyone?), but if you take an objective look at Zoho vs google you\’ll see Zoho is the real loser here.

Zoho makes copycat apps (show me one unique product they have). They have a spreadsheet and a word processor. Google does too. Googles are free and Zohos are free. Winner: Google. This will only continue.

As Kiko showed, you cant offer free versions of the same products as Google offers for free. Actually, you can, but you lose. You die a slow death. You cant cash in Techcrunch posts at the bank.

Zoho better get a business model or they will go the way of Kiko and all the other sites that Techcrunch drools over.

“And while all of this is going on, Zoho is quietly building a really excellent online office suite of its own.”

Not only are we hit with Zoho ads on this site, but any product even remotely close to a Zoho product and it gets a very sales-like line. I have nothing wrong with an author supporting a product he/she loves, but it’s becoming annoying to see it come up in so many TechCrunch reviews.

Honestly, I haven’t seen any online office products worth a switch. They are all interesting and some have great features, but this area of web apps has a long way to go.

Google Office is a classic case of a solution in search of a problem.

would be nice if they add a multi-protocol IM product which is web based, something similiar to what koolim.com does or meebo.com does, would be very good and useful.

Writely beta isn’t close to competitive with Microsoft Word in terms of usability and feature set. I probably don’t use more than 40% of Word 2003’s features, but I estimate my wife uses close to 60%.

Writely can’t even compete with Windows Live Writer for blog editing. (See a review at http://oakleafblog.blogspot.co.....-thud.html.

–rj

checkin

Michael,

When you say “Customers”, do you mean Corporate Customers? If so, then I think Google has an uphill battle on its hands. Imagine yourself being in the shoes of the CTO and telling a committee that the company should switch from Microsoft’s products to Google’s products. What about the legacy files, e.g. softcopies/hardcopies of Outlook files, Word files, Excel files, etc.? Transitioning from one to the other will be very expensive, time consuming, and bring about unnecessary risk. What about retraining employees, e.g. cost, timing, acceptance, etc.? Will a budget committee consider such a move? Realistically, I think not for the reasons cited above.

Also, as nOOdles pointed out, companies adopting Google’s Office product may risk staying compliant under SOX 404 requirements. One of the SOX 404 requirements deals with spreadsheet and database files that impact external reports and the associated internal controls. I’m not sure companies, or their outside auditors, would embrace the ideal of having their active work product stored offsite. A lot of security issues need to be addressed. Finally, what about those situations where hardcoding of a spreadsheet to a database is required, e.g. Oracle? Will Google’s spreadsheet allow for such interfacing? What about the risk of the connection going down between Google and the corporate customer when real-time data is needed, e.g. treasury activities?

I’m not so sure it’s that simple.

it will be a very long process, but i think Google can do it.

“B”, “Shaun” , Has it occured to you that the reason why Zoho is often mentioned is simply the fact that they are pumping out new applications / feautures at an amazing speeed? Two products? Current count on the Zoho Portal is 12, but their own portal does not keep pace with development: over the weekend they released Zoho Project, which is not even listed there. This morning they  released an upgrade to Zoho Sheet.

These guys are pumping out products at an amazing rate and Mike would have to be blind to not notice it

Talking about disclosure… if I remember correctly Zoho is, or was, also an advertiser here. Is it not, Michael?

There is a rumor today that Bill Gates has quit Microsoft to become an entry level programmer at Google. Is this true?

Anyone been accepted into the beta yet? I’m curious to see what the interface looks like.