Googles takes the Office to the Web
08.28.06 - 06:29am
We all knew it was coming. I woke up this morning to see the majority of my professional RSS feeds clamoring about how Google has launched a new productivity suite and what a surprise it was. The going trend of the current Internet culture is to take everything to the Internet and detach your applications and users from physical desktops, theoretically increasing collaboration and mobile productivity. I will admit I am a rather large fan of some of the services that Google has released lately but the idea of using their Word-processor, Writely, to edit and create my files online seems a bit fishy especially in regards to the fact that all my data will be stored online in servers that I cannot guarantee will be safe and secure.
Google has slowly been infiltrating every aspect of our daily online lives with products that cover the entire range of services. While being highly successful with their search engine and directed advertising software, Google will have a much harder time trying to enter into the Office Productivity field. According to the Red Herring there are currently 17 applications including Google’s Office that are vying for a piece of Microsoft’s 95% field domination. This particular genre is a strong cash cow for Microsoft as it generates over $11.7 Billion in revenue with $8.3 Billion in profit. Coming from Google the word is that Google Office is supposed to be a collaborative program that will work with and not against Office in document creation. Their current target is to have people create documents within Microsoft Office, email the files to each other, and have the ability to edit the documents within Google Office, and then repeat the process. While this sounds like they are trying to not step of Microsoft’s toes, it looks like they are setting up a base to launch a full-fledges Office suite. Apparently in the past Google has already stiffed a few people including Sun Microsystems with whom Google agreed to promote Sun’s OpenOffice while Sun offered Google Desktop downloads with Java downloads. I can easily see Google slowly easing their way into this genre by creating the right contacts, supporting enough Office features, and making everything highly available.
While Google does have a lot going against it to enter this field, Google also has a lot of things going for it. Google’s datacenters have been proven to be capable of supporting large numbers of clients while not showing any strain. Combined with the vast quantity of online storage available to Google and some crafty product designers and coders and Google might have another recipe for success. Only time will tell how easily the small businesses that Google is targeting will adopt this new suite of programs. If Google approaches Office like they did with Gmail, it won’t take too long for Google to make a dent in Microsoft’s stronghold. Now we just hope that Google does a better job than AOL in regards to customer security.
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