Schmidt to Ballmer: Stop Stealing MY Office Collaboration Lines!
Poor Microsoft? After all, the “barbarians” are at the gate, as the newly crowned King of Techmeme declares, at the top of Techmeme!
As I analyzed this morning, though, Microsoft is indeed in for the cloud count, and the CONTINUED OFFICE WIN. Regardless of blogosphere goading, however, Microsoft is waging its Google Apps battle on its own Microsoft multi billion dollar Office franchise terms, as well it should.
“Microsoft has failed to understand the real power of Google Docs,” Arrington laments. Really? Microsoft is in good company, then, the company of millions of Microsoft Office powered professionals, organizations and entreprises worldwide with no clue that Google Apps even exists! And those that are aware of Google’s wish to “consumerize” the software world in its Goolgey image are NOT rushing the Googleplex gates to get in on the Google cloud.
Google Apps is famously stuck at its supposed “hundreds of thousands” of no-fee “customers.” What about Google Apps for Enterprise adoption at the almost free, non-earnings contributing price point of $50 per user per year?
“Dozens of large global corporations are EVALUATING Google Apps,” so beams Dave Girouard, GM of Google’s corporate business. Evaluating? The rest of the Google Enterprise lineup is not selling like hotcakes either.
Google Apps is but a year old, Google Enterprise Search, however, is an old Google veteran. The Google Enterprise Search Appliance customer claim has been a long stagnant “thousands.” Google Enterprise revenue contribution has also been stagnant: Google continues to be stubornly 99% AdWords pure.
Nevertheless, Arrington believes Google and the “other Office competitors” are breathing a sigh of relief because he credits them with “tearing the Office wall down.” If anyone is breathing easier today, though, it is Microsoft.
As I pointed out earlier, Redmond has carefully orchestrated an integrated, multi-prong Web enhanced plan of Office 2.0 attack that usurps Google’s core Apps “selling point,” online collaboration!
After all, CEO Eric Schmidt has steadfastly insisted that Apps is NOT a Microsoft Office competitor, but only its better Web collaboration half. Why play around with cutesy Google Apps at all, then, if the big Office gun comes Internet collaboration enabled!
I also noted that, despite typical blogosphere conventional wisdom portraying a Microsoft deemed to be ”ignoring” the supposed legions of individuals and businesses clamoring for Redmond to play the Google version of the Office Cloud game, the real software giant is responding to real world need for online-offline productivity interaction.
Microsoft doesn’t have its head in the cloud, and that is a good thing: If the cloud is really to reign Office Productivity supreme, why is Google spurring its users to download Sun StarOffice to the desktop, the MICROSOFT DESKTOP!
ALSO: Microsoft Office Thunder to Blast Google Apps Cloud and Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway
UPDATE: YAY! InsiderChatter.com on WebbAlert: NO Google Barbarians at Microsoft Gate