Google Challenging Microsoft For Business Software 235
A reader tips a report at the NY Times about the progress Google is making in its quest to unseat Microsoft's position atop the business software industry. From the article:
It has taken years, but Google seems to be cutting into Microsoft's stronghold — businesses. ... In the last year Google has scored an impressive string of wins, including at the Swiss drug maker Hoffmann-La Roche, where over 80,000 employees use the package, and at the Interior Department, where 90,000 use it. One big reason is price. Google charges $50 a year for each person using its product, a price that has not changed since it made its commercial debut, even though Google has added features. In 2012, for example, Google added the ability to work on a computer not connected to the Internet, as well as security and data management that comply with more stringent European standards. That made it much easier to sell the product to multinationals and companies in Europe. ... Microsoft says it does not yet see a threat. Google 'has not yet shown they are truly serious,' said Julia White, a general manager in Microsoft's business division. 'From the outside, they are an advertising company.'"
Hold on, let me google translate this... (Score:4, Interesting)
From Language: Microsoft Business Division Marketspeak
"Google has not yet shown they are truly serious. From the outside, they are an advertising company."
To Language: Reality
"We have shit in our pants about this and aren't able to figure out how to avoid destruction, so we'll try to dismiss the threat. We always say the same about real threats. And worst, our bad dreams always turn up true (see previous dismissals about Linux, Apple, Facebook and Google before)"
Re: one of the biggest and most powerful companies (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft says it does not yet see a threat.
Isn't this what happened to Microsoft in the mobile/phone/tablet space? Now they are playing catch-up to both Google and Apple. Complacency is a dangerous copilot.
Google are a huge threat! Oglviy migrated all its users to "GMail", the employees really hate it vs proper exchange, outlook, office stack. But when a few massive companies like Oglviy migrate Google will improve to the point where they become more solid contenders.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
BeOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Which AT&T CPU was BeOS originally on? And when the BeBox was made, the PREP boxes from Motorola were already making their rounds - the PPC was nowhere near fading. Be's mistake was in jettisoning the BeBox before Motorola, Power Computing and Umax endorsed BeOS. When Apple pulled the plug on the clone business, Be could have offered them the choice of making BeOS the default OS for their PREP boxes - in that case, Power Computing would have survived, and PPC, despite this setback and despite OS/2-PPC coming unhinged, would have had a better chance at being successful.
x86 was never a good platform for Be - anybody who had an x86 ran Windows on it, or at a distant second, Linux or OS/2. There was hardly room for a third, fourth or fifth OS. Putting BeOS on one of the alternatives, like PPC was a good move, as was coming out w/ a whole new computer such as the BeBox. Just that as a new OS, there was little native software for that platform (would have been the case on either PPC or x86) and the BeBox itself was more of a home/hobbyist computer, much like the Amigas or Ataris. Had Be kept that platform going and released essential software for it, from money managers, games, office suites, et al, instead of abandoning it just b'cos it could be adapted by clone makers, they may well have been more successful.
Why is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Awful Summary (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not even accurate. I work for Roche in the UK, and currently, we use MS Office. There are apparently plans to transition us to Google Apps sometime in 2013, but that's as close as it gets. I believe that this is the case for other countries, and the global organisation too. (Incidentally, this transition was pushed by the Roche - Genentech merger: Genentech uses Google Apps, and to align the two organisations, one had to move. Google won... although Genentech colleagues lament the loss of Outlook to this day.)
In addition, while I can see that Gmail / Calendar and maybe document editing will be fine, I'd expect that a good swathe of the company will still need MS Excel - lots of us regularly use functionality that the Google spreadsheet doesn't possess.
Re: one of the biggest and most powerful companies (Score:3, Interesting)
The other thing about Google Apps (Score:2, Interesting)
The other thing about Google Apps is that it's designed for Chrome and if it works on anything else that's nice but they don't care and it's Not Supported. (You can also use Chromium.)
Re: one of the biggest and most powerful companies (Score:4, Interesting)
has sold at Walmart prices for damned near 30 years
IBM compatibles did not sell at Walmart prices for damned near 30 years. Commodore, Synclair, Atari owned that market slice during the 80s and the early 90s. Apple was lower end than Microsoft. Microsoft was positioned nicely in the middle range with the "junky" systems beneath them and the "too expensive" systems: DEC, SGI, Sun, IBM RISC/6000 ... above them.
The Walmart pricing is a product of the 2000s where corporations stopped upgrading rapidly and thus applications had to support older machines, and discount machines offered the capabilities of older machines. That's a nasty cycle that Microsoft partially created by allowing for a pause with Windows XP. They realize their mistake and they are fixing it.
And yeah, the bottom 1/3rd of the Windows market, which shouldn't have been part of the midrange in the first place might go for something cheaper.
Re: one of the biggest and most powerful companies (Score:5, Interesting)
But still, there is a reason pretty much everybody I know use some kind of web based email, gmail probably being the most used. I don't think it's because they hate it. While I don't know how many uses Google docs, you have to be some kind of hardcore office nerd to really need something else.
Re:Hold on, let me google translate this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hardly. I'm no MS fanboy, but Google's apps are a joke for businesses. The word processor and spreadsheet apps are not anywhere close to being something people want to use. My wife and I use it for sharing some spreadsheets and notes, its kind of like a tablet. Yea, its cool and all, but if you want to get real work done, its not what you use.
More important, Google is removing features to top it off, and adding things that no one cares about. For example, killing proper active sync ... I'd give you an example of a feature they've added but I don't care about them so I can't even be bothered to remember.
Dismissals of Apple we bad. Dismissals of Linux were reasonably accurate in the desktop space, though it does have a good run in the dirt cheap servers market until you factor in the number of companies held hostage by some douche admin. Facebook is a passing fad and its clear to any intelligent business on the planet. Thats not to say that those businesses aren't going to profit from that fad as it goes screaming by. Outside of search, Google isn't really owning anything. Android is a race to the bottom. Yes, they have a flagship device or 3 that almost doesn't suck, but its popularity isn't with decent devices, its with free phones that might as well be running some properitary OS as they are so weak and feable you really don't get any of the advantages Android brings to the table.
Google may one day beat out Windows and Office, but it won't be with anything they currently have offered. I have a couple friends who are employed by Google and thus are Google fanboys, they rant on about how awesome it is and how you don't need offline apps or Microsoft/Apple and then every time we go somewhere we end up in a situation where they can't do something I can. My wife likes her Nexus 7, but she'd rather have an iPad mini. Yes this is anecdotal, but its pretty common outside the fanboy arena.
Microsoft may be throwing some spin on it, but they are hardly going to disappear anytime soon due to Google's current offerings anymore than Apple's current offerings are going to put them out of business. Facebook is still irrelevant.