Google Apps Means Nothing
I would never suggest that the release is insignificant, but I would still stress the fact that at this point, people are still putting too much weight into the how much pressure this really places on the main competitor of this release, Microsoft. The significance of this release will be most strongly felt by smaller start-ups that can no longer compete. Paul Kedrosky probably says it best in his post: What makes you think that you can do it so much better than Google can that the inevitable free Google Apps product doesn’t kick your ass out of the office market? Microsoft, on the other hand, is not only well underway with the development of their Live line of products, and is positioned just as well, if not better, to capture the very people that this product targets.
So, who does this product target? Obviously not your major corporations. Any company that needs to maintain any sort of privacy cannot simply rely on this type of third party application. Companies ranging in size from your average mom-and-pop shop or small start-up to mid-sized companies that can’t afford the liscening or at least choose that as one of their cost-cutting initiatives. Putting this into perspective,Â? Steve Bryant says in his post:
Microsoft’s Office market may be $12 billion, but the lion’s share of those billions comes from a relatively small number of large companies. Writely can’t compete with Word, Spreadsheets can’t compete with Excel. They cater to the soccer mom, not the corporate worker.Â?
The question that has to be asked is how do these companies provide for Google in the long term? Google will obviously gain valuable information about these companies that it can use to improve the AdSense program. Not only will Google be watching every move the business makes, ads will be served with these products, which is questionable for any business that is vying for respectability (I always get mad at a colleague of mine that uses Incredimail for just that reason). So these businesses, no matter how well Google Apps works, will probablyÂ? look at alternatives. This would be 1) Upgrading their package with Google, 2) Using one of the few competitors that isn’t Microsoft that survives, 3) Using Microsoft.
Google will undoubtedly force many of the other companies out with this release alone, and when they offer the package upgrades, which is rumoured to be on the way later this year, many more will be weaseled out.Â? Any companies left will probably be reasonable choices, and will probably rely heavily on integrating their services with other, large services. This may even include integration of their services with existing Google Apps clients, thus making the argument to upgrade with them much more compelling. These services will exist and will always have a chance based on people’s strong feelings of resentment towards large companies like Microsoft (and potentially Google, but the company seems to find a way to avoid that kind of scrutiny).
So, why am I so confident in Microsoft? Microsoft has the upper hand, and people seem to forget how much harder it is to gain a customer than keep a customer, and Microsoft has so many different customers toÂ? leverage in this battle.Â? Microsoft already it’s own Office userbase andÂ? has everyone familiar andÂ? adept at using their Office products. Continue to maintain that kind of exposure, and everyone will continue to be able to use their products. Microsoft merely needs to provide seamless integration between their new Office products and the Live initiative. That will automatically provide a huge following for the service and potentially start pulling customers away from Google. Really, if you could combine advantages of the desktop application that Microsoft Office has, and make it easy to, when desired, take advantage of the convenience, etc. of a Web-based suite of office products, it would be the best-of-both-worldsÂ? situation that users look for. The problem for Google is they don’t have both worlds. They exist online.
One of the other huge points with this is Google’s frequent attempts to get a userbase. Google is simply a search engine to a majority of the people that use the site, and while that seems to pay the bills, it’s not the best model for longevity. Users on the Internet need to be channeled, and Google knows that they need to be more than a search engine to ensure they are able to control that channeling. Microsoft has huge followings with their Live Messenger and Live Spaces services. If the results being returned from Microsoft’s search become as relevant to the user as Google’s, why wouldn’t they use it? It will be right there, more easily accessed, and providing the exact same thing, why go to another site?
I said it to open the article and I’ll say it again - it’s not that the release is insignificant, it’s just doesn’t put any new pressure onto Microsoft. Everyone in the industry knew the release was coming, and knows about the releases and integrations to come, from Writely to GDrive. Microsoft’s moves against this have been in place for a long time now, and this shouldn’t change any of it. The only way this release will start putting any added pressure onto Microsoft is when Microsoft makes their online Office release. Then the picture will start to become more clear.Â? For now, with no actual users, probably released as a Beta with several bugs to fix andÂ? important additions to come,Â? Google Apps means nothing.