Major Google/Intuit Partnership

September 13th, 2006 at 11:26 am

There are many Google services that could be integrated with QuickBooks and other software for small businesses. Yahoo is another player with potential to such partnerships.

September 13th, 2006 at 1:11 pm

Just recently I was driving down Shoreline, and remarked that the only way for Google to get some more real estate close to the campus was to buy Intuit. And that drug company, Alza, which has quite a few nice buildings directly within Google blocks.

September 13th, 2006 at 1:32 pm

That’s all we need, a bunch more google ads in our quickbooks program.

September 13th, 2006 at 1:58 pm

I agree with Adam. And, in MHO If it wasn’t for Google, Yahoo and MSN would still be dragging their heels and would not have pushed their internal groups to innovate and rollout new services. Nothing like great competition. I for one love and use Intuit and Goog so be eager to see how much value this partnership ads to users of Intuit.

September 13th, 2006 at 2:05 pm

How this “don’t be evil” company can play in the financial field? If you’re interested in mixing financial technology with longtail market, contact me.

September 13th, 2006 at 2:09 pm

Small businesses are not online. We are finding we are the only web presense for over 50% of our merchants and 60% were not even in the Yellow Pages before. Bringing them online in mass has to done if the Local Internet advertising opportunity is going to develop for Google and others. It also has to happen if we are ever going to have a better local consumer search experience. I truly would like to find something different that the local Starbucks when I search.

While this is a great exit for StepUp at a great stepup (I could not resist the pun), the real story here is the Intuit/Google deal. Most people who saw StepUp saw it as a powerful product with a fundamental issue on merchant acquisition. Intuit may have solved that problem for them.

Intuit has one of if not the most interesting channel into the small business community out there.

Thier work with the payroll and bookkeeping channels has created a very unique opportunity for additional services to be sold. It is not clear that this will be as effective for selling advertising as it is for Quickbooks plugsin or payroll processing, etc but it is significant.

It continue to show Google innovation in expanding thier base. The recent salesforce.com efforts are another example of this.

September 13th, 2006 at 2:20 pm

Google has been nailing Microsoft’s coffin for quite some time. This is another one of those nails on Microsoft’s coffin. Google has been purchasing and/or programming spreadsheet, presentation, word processors, data base, e-mail software and so forth to build the next online Google Office Productivity Suite.

This strategic move is aimed at aligning U.S. small businesses under Google’s wings, something Microsoft has been unable to do with their financial software.

Microsoft, are you there?

Cheers,

Omar.-

September 13th, 2006 at 2:32 pm

While it’s a good start there are way too many questions that need answering - like:
auto-update from inventory?
US only or international over time?
closing the transaction with merchant services?

September 13th, 2006 at 2:58 pm

Certainly clever and interesting.

I am gathering they are planning to wire ads into online version not into desktop one, right? Because if they do it with a desktop, then it sort of gives Microsoft a green light to do it for all their products too.

Alex

September 13th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

Did you mean to mention Quicken in there?

Sounds pretty nice to me.

September 13th, 2006 at 3:48 pm

Google everywhere software is
Salesforce, Quickbooks, …. Quake, Madden next?

September 13th, 2006 at 4:01 pm

This definately seems like the next logical step for Google’s Checkout. Many small to medium-sized businesses need ecommerce websites with a payment system, and many of them already use QuickBooks. With this partnership, they are streamlining the process of running a commerse site online.

One thing does bother me, though. As #2 Drama 2.0 aptly put it, Desktop can really expose a company’s proprietary information to the greater community. Let’s not forget that although Google gave information about its users to the Brazilian government (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/05/1242239&from=rss). Also remember AOL. Despite the claim by Google and other internet giants that they have multiple checks and balances to ensure that no information is leaked, I think of Murphy’s Law.

I like a lot of things about Google, but bundling Desktop with accounting software really freaks me out.

September 13th, 2006 at 6:23 pm

AdWords and small (largely offline) businesses aren’t the best fit. According to Jupiter’s recent report, the industry average keyword costs 44 cents (Google commands a premium, probably closer to 65 cents). For online stores the conversion rate is 1.5%. That equates to $29 per transaction (using the lower 44 cents CPC).

That might make sense for webstores but how does it work for the offline business like the local auto mechanic? Presumably some small percentage of web traffic equates to foot traffic. Add yet another multiplier to the $29 figure and it just doesn’t make economic sense to me. AdWords is a tremendous hammer, but not everything is a nail.

September 13th, 2006 at 7:21 pm

Adwords can make sense for small business if their goods are also available online.

September 13th, 2006 at 9:35 pm

(Comment #34 was from me, dysonlu, not Wes. Sorry about that.)

September 13th, 2006 at 11:43 pm

I’ve been a longtime QuickBooks user and quite frankly, this program is rock solid. Intuit’s QuickBooks is one product I would seriously do a free commerical for. And as for the QuickBooks Advisor who doesn’t email out QuickBooks-generated invoices because he/she is “paranoid” that Intuit is going to see their data–please buy a ticket. No way in heck that I’d want someone with such a dated mentality advising me on financial matters. This advisor is probably one of the small businesses that is totally off the Internet because they can’t get beyond their paranoia.

September 14th, 2006 at 11:25 am

I look forward to another extensive set of useless pages on the internet.

Don’t Blogger and Pages provide enough ways for someone to create a half-arsed internet presence already?

September 15th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

This is a great idea for extending Google AdWords into the hands of small-businesses. I’m thinking that Local Search will be mighty important for more and more small businesses—coupons, better targeting, etc. Even if you own a Blinds store and don’t have an ecommerce presence, you will still benefit by working with AdWords and marketing on the Internet.

I’ve worked in “print” and have researched costs of other forms of advertising. What’s a small business to do for their marketing/advertising efforts?

Yellow pages = costly, ineffective

Local TV Ads = right, all small business just have tens of thousands of $ laying around to make a cheesy ad

Print = Expensive even if you gather an economies of scale by printing 20,000 brochures or inserts, and your response rates are pathetic (variable data printing changes response rate to the better)

Radio = Just another barely focused-on-your-segment mass media approach; might as well throw your money in a hole.

Just Do Nothing = Yeah, that’s the attitude! Apathy 4 life!

Small-business need leads, phone calls, emails that drive sales, AdWords (Overture, Internet advertising, etc.) help a company stay competitive with an increasing population going online.