Google Makes Its Move: Office 2.0

August 27th, 2006 at 10:21 pm

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.

August 27th, 2006 at 10:58 pm

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.

August 27th, 2006 at 11:05 pm

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.

August 27th, 2006 at 11:22 pm

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.

August 27th, 2006 at 11:33 pm

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.

August 27th, 2006 at 11:57 pm

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).

August 28th, 2006 at 12:28 am

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.

August 28th, 2006 at 12:57 am

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

August 28th, 2006 at 2:30 am

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..

August 28th, 2006 at 2:44 am

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

August 28th, 2006 at 4:00 am

Learn more and discuss Office 2.0 at the upcoming conference:

August 28th, 2006 at 4:13 am

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?

August 28th, 2006 at 4:35 am

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.

August 28th, 2006 at 5:07 am

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.

August 28th, 2006 at 5:14 am

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?

August 28th, 2006 at 5:33 am

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.

August 28th, 2006 at 5:45 am

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

August 28th, 2006 at 6:15 am

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.

August 28th, 2006 at 6:38 am

“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.

August 28th, 2006 at 6:50 am

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.

August 28th, 2006 at 7:30 am

checkin

August 28th, 2006 at 7:54 am

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

August 28th, 2006 at 8:04 am

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

August 28th, 2006 at 8:30 am

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

August 28th, 2006 at 8:53 am

But you are using Writely for your personal use, or may be at the most for your small business. Writely can not go beyond that.

August 28th, 2006 at 9:11 am

common give me a break from this GOOG hype,

how many of the 51 poeple who posted in this thread aren’t using office ?

August 28th, 2006 at 9:37 am

I think this will get really interesting when it’s part of Google’s Dell pack-in or other similar deals. Corel/WordPerfect has had a mini-renaissance packed into low-end Dell and other PCs. The impact in the office may be collaboration, but at home, who wants to pay $X00 for software on a $299 PC? . . . even if you can afford it . . .

If that takes off, then it become a very interesting ecosystem as for folks like us that can extend the platform.

August 28th, 2006 at 10:16 am

I’m a small business owner (20 employees), and I have been beta testing the hosted email for business for a few months. It works great. We will switch to this. I don’t think we’ll say goodbye to MS Office just yet. But if it looks like a good move for us, we will soon be saying goodbye to MS Exchange Server and some hefty IT support costs.

Personally, I am not concerned about Google messing with our info. Security issues don’t bother me.

August 28th, 2006 at 11:45 am

Security issues don’t bother you? Wow. That’s quite a statement from sombody whose business supports 20 people and their families. Glad I don’t work for you.

August 28th, 2006 at 1:59 pm

We should really all wake up to the great threat that Google & Yahoo pose to each one of our businesses, specially if our business is not a Fortune 500 one, because:
1- they are entering business after business
2- they are armed with Billions of dollars to enter any business they want
3- they have the mandate to justify their 100Bill dollar like valuations which requires them to enter business after business.

So when we use Google & Yahoo, whether as search engine users and/or advertisers, we are effectively arming them to Kill our businesses.
Does that make any sense? No. Only if you are Google & Yahoo share holders it does.
Is there any hope, any solutions? YES. YES, there is.
We need search engines that promise not to enter any other business but to be in search engine business. Now there is one search engine that gives us that promise, it is AnooX. They arehere:
http://www.anoox.com

So if you care about your jobs or your (small to medium size) business, switch to Anoox from Google & Yahoo, UNTIL they give us the same promise as Anoox does:
http://www.anoox.com/in-search.....s-only.jsp