Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Who says Google is a vulnerable, one-trick, (rich) pony!

I DO, of course, but the blogosphere, once again, comes to big, bad Google’s rescue, today dutifully co-hyping glowing Google speak spinning its latest Googley bestowal of entry level software, ”free,” to purportedly eager enterprise masses: Google Sites.

The CNET Editor-In-Chief, for example: The newly bumped up Dan Farber celebrates his “return to the blogosphere,” with a return to celebrating the purportedly “power” Google cloud, on behalf of Google:

In the future, Google Apps will add more capabilities for sharing video, a la YouTube, with group and voice capabilities, Glotzbach said. At this point Google doesn’t plan to create a marketplace for creators of Google Site templates and themes, but it will take advantage of the iGoogle gadgets and APIs that allow developers to embed objects with the service.

Google Sites is a key piece of functionality for Google Apps. It gives the suite a way to integrate all kinds of components in support of accomplishing a particular task. Adding social capabilities and a database to the suite will turn up the heat on Microsoft to show what it has waiting in the wings to go beyond the prodigious Microsoft Office.

All MUST be good for business in the Google cloud, then, if the CNET Editor-In-Chief vouches for a Google Apps anti-Microsoft prowess? NO!

While the lead CNET reporter, Farber, reposts, verbatim, paragraphs of Googley enterprise marketing speak, courtesy of product spokespeople Scott Johnston and Matt Glotzbach, the leader of the CNET reporting staff neglects to concern himself, or the readers of the publication he heads, with the real, not so Googley words that matter to the enterprise: THE GOOGLE FINE PRINT! 

Here at Insider Chatter, however, I reveal the risks businesses face if they take Googlers up on their dangerous call to “free” software arms in an increasingly dark Google cloud.

Here is what Google’s Johnston and Glotzbach really have to say to prospective users of the new Google Sites in the enterprise, via their product’s TOS:

You agree that Google has no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any Content and other communications maintained or transmitted by Google services. You acknowledge that Google may have set no fixed upper limit on the number of transmissions you may send or receive through Google services or the amount of storage space used; however, we retain the right, at our sole discretion, to create limits at any time with or without notice.

Google reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, Google services (or any part thereof) with or without notice. You agree that Google shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of Google services.

WOW! Not much of a Google Enterprise sales pitch!

Google is oblivious to the enterprise need for proprietary control of its own data, but Google is crystal clear on ITS determination to control the proprietary data of the world’s enterprises:

Upon the termination of your use of Google services, including upon receipt of a certificate or other legal document confirming your death, Google will close your account and you will no longer be able to retrieve content contained in that account.

COLD, COLD GOOGLE!

MORE ON THE VERY RISKY GOOGLE “ENTERPRISE”:

There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Postini: Will Google REALLY Mean Enterprise Apps Business? and
Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway and
TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and
Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer and
Schmidt to Ballmer: Stop Stealing MY Office Collaboration Lines! and
Microsoft Office Thunder to Blast Google Apps Cloud and
IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat

ALSO: The Web Economy Rejoices: Google IS Overrated and Due For BIGGER Fall! and Google vs. Microsoft: The REAL Health Platform War Story

PLUS: LinkedIn’s BIG Agenda: Stamp Out Business Cards!

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Google Enterprise touts its Google Apps product IS meant for business, hailing three Postini product enhancements: Message filtering, security and discovery.

Managing email systems has never been easy, and for many businesses it only seems to be getting harder: Not only do you have to worry about increasingly complex email security threats, upgrades and patches, but archiving and e-discovery needs to meet regulatory requirements are also on the rise. We believe cloud computing can dramatically simplify this problem for our customers and reduce costs, and today we’re taking another step to make it so.

BUT, will Google take a really big step to make its really big enterprise ambitions ”so”?

In There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway I analyze how Google is making NO serious Google Apps PAID headway.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt conveniently forgot his suppposed new motto last week in his 2007 Q4 report to Wall Street, “Search, Ads and Apps”: Wall Street is apparently forgetting it too! GOOG continues to be stubbornly 99% AdWords and AdSense pure (SEE Google Execs Silent On NYC Print, Radio, TV Promises) and the Googler in Chief underscored the GOOG magic is NOT highly diversified:

Where we see big opportunities and our primary focus on investments is in fact in our core business, and you see the success we had in 2007 and in Q4, the vast majority of that was actually not in all the things that generates all the exciting new announcements that we are happy to talk about, but in investments in core search and core advertising globally, which I’m incredibly proud of.

Schmidt was NOT particularly proud to dwell on Google Apps’ track record. When asked by an analyst, “Should we assume that most of the growth in licensing was due to the Postini acquisition in the quarter?” Schmidt cut off his products point man:

JONATHAN ROSENBERG: I think we’ve had a lot of success to date with small businesses. We added a lot of ISPs, which tend to drive a lot of the traffic. We also pushed a lot of the education efforts, which I think had a pretty significant component. Beyond that, it’s hard to –

SCHNMIDT: The answer to your question is yes. It’s easier that way. Why don’t we go to our next question?

The BIG question for Google Enterprise is can it REALLY mean Apps Business: WILL GOOGLE EVER STEP UP TO THE DIRECT ENTERPRISE SALES PLATE IN A MEANINGFUL WAY? Google extols the self-serve and reseller sales models because they cost the least for Google. You get what you DON’T pay for though.

Google’s steady stream of incremental product upgrades do not sell themselves to businesses. Google bought Postini with the aim of being a serious enterprise player. The Google Apps pitch is not an easy sell, but if the Postini add-on is as powerful as Google hails, Mountain View ought to invest more heavily in direct sales along with product development.

MORE:  Google Apps Meets Les Miserables: Enterprise IT Team DREAMS Big

ALSO: Is Union Square Ventures Changing Exit Strategies? and Microsoft’s Yahoo Bid a Winner: Google Running Scared! and LinkedIn To Mine User Data For Corporate Espionage

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Google has a big Enterprise problem, and it just got $1.2 billion worth bigger: Arch software rival and enterprise powerhouse Microsoft is buying Fast Search and Transfer so their combined market power will “help businesses capitalize on the power of entreprise search”: Fast’s solutions are “operational at over 3500 mission critical installations.”

I asked Kevin Gough, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Google Enterprise, at the Enterprise Search Summit in May, “Why can’t Google make any serious money in Enterprise Search?”

I also asked Jared Spataro, Group Product Manager, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), how Microsoft fights Google in the enterprise trenches.

“Enterprise search is our business, it’s our house and Google is not going to take that business,” Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, has assured business partners. Spataro told me it is his job to “deliver on that commitment and ensure that we marshall all of our resources and assets to compete effectively in this market.”

Microsoft takes a “very straightforward, two-step approach,” in walking IT buyers thorough a comparative value proposition analysis, Spataro indicated:

We start with a baseline overview of core Enterprise Search capabilities.  Google’s Search Appliances are fundamentally based on the theory that if you take web search and slowly modify it over time you’re going to get it right for the Enterprise. We disagree.  We think that if you start with web search and slowly modify it over time, you end up with web search that never quite crosses the threshold of what IT Professionals need to do the job right.

Google’s Mini business targets the low-end, transactional buyer, Spataro told me, “But increasingly IT purchases of Search are being driven by “silo buyers” or “strategic buyers,” both of whom sit in IT and both of whom have high expectations for a potential solution”:

The most interesting trend we’re seeing is the increasing involvement of the “strategic buyer” in the search decision process. This buyer—who tends to be a senior IT exec with responsibility for a broad set of IT investments—understands the value of an integrated business productivity platform. This gives us a base to work from in making the Search discussion not just a conversation about the here-and-now problem of Search, but a more productive dialogue about the value of Search as a part of a broader productivity investment.

Spataro on core Microsoft vs. Google differentiators:

Security – We offer the ability to index access control lists and the ability to do real-time security trimming.  Google does only real-time security trimming.

Scalability and High Availability – We offer an architecture that allows IT Professionals to create a search topology/deployment that meets their needs—for scalability, high availability or both.  Google is locked to the Appliance model and is limited in both dimensions.  Our single-index alone scales to more than 20 million more docs than Google; The ability to cluster web front ends and query servers and support for dedicated indexing hardware makes all the difference.

Customization/Development – Our search solutions are built on a technology stack that no one in the industry can match, allowing customers to easily customize the look and feel with dedicated design tools or to access our web service interfaces or object models to fully customize the solution.

Relevance – Our relevance algorithms were designed for the Enterprise and have been tuned for the environment. Google’s relevance algorithms started with Page Rank, an approach that works well on the Internet but that doesn’t yield good results inside the firewall.

Unstructured Content Search – We support more content sources out of the box (including Lotus Notes) and have an open architecture for writing connectors to other unstructured content sources.

Structured Content Search – The Business Data Catalog allows customers to connect to structured data systems and line-of-business systems with no-code, providing the ability to both index the information and perform “business actions” on the results; Customers can build composite apps that use search as an interface for really driving business processes. In contrast, Google’s OneBox is a clever—but limited—federation framework that hard-codes how you interface with specific systems.

Manageability – Our approach to meta-data management is far superior, allowing customers to easily manage information the system finds as it crawls content; Google has no ability to manage metadata.

Desktop Search – Windows Desktop Search, for Windows XP, and Windows Vista provide rich, actionable search interfaces.  We do extremely well when customers compare our offerings to Google Desktop; Google Desktop is browser-based and has the limitations—both in presentation as well as interaction—of typical browser-based applications.

Google has MANY enterprise limitations, as I discuss in There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise.

Not only is the much ballyhooed Googley consumerization of the enterprise NOT happening, corporate decision makers are wondering if Google Enterprise is a joke! What’s more, even Google partner IBM has written off Google’s attempts to be a serious enterprise contender. SEE:  IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat 

MORE on how Google is NOT “feeling lucky” in the enterprise: Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer and Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway and TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and Interop: Citrix XenSource Flys as Google Crashes.

ALSO: Autonomy vs. Google Search Appliance? No Contest: Google Enterprise Gets Defensive and Data Portability ‘Magic’? Australian Faraday Media Pushes Web Agenda in U.S.

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Google wants to change ALL the Microsoft software rules. BUT, are enterprises really “crazy to buy packaged software,” as the Googler in Chief ridicules?

Microsoft ridicules “Google’s optimism as wishful thinking,” and so do enterprises themselves, as I have been chronicling, reporting and analyzing from the field since I heard Michael Lock, Director of North American Sales for Google Enterprise, declare “Death to the (Microsoft folder) hierarchy,” one year ago at the Googleplex in New York City, when I broke the news of a scheduled Q1 2007 launch of Google Apps for the Enterprise.

Given the “explosion” of unstructured data in the enterprise, “old methods of information management don’t work,” Lock asserted. Google Enterprise Solutions makes organizational life as “fast and effective” as a personal search at Google.com, he underscored.

“Google is a different kind of technology company, we build technology products that people love, not that they have to use,” Lock concluded.

Google love belongs in the enterprise is the Google Apps Premiere pitch that I have heard first hand from Google execs multiple times since in NYC:  Kevin Gough at the Enterprise Search Summit in May, Matthew Glotzbach at Interop in October and Michael Lock once again at the Googleplex in June.

One year ago, I asked Lock for a projection of when Google will succeed in bringing the “Death to the hierarchy” he heralded. Lock told me that forward thinking enterprises are moving away from hierarchical data organization, but no specific date for an absolute demise of the “hierarchy” was provided.

Nonetheless in his return visit to the NYC Googleplex eight months later, Lock said in the affirmative: “Hierarchies are dead.” “Data has changed and it doesn’t come in columns and rows,” Lock assured.

REALLY? I asked Gough in May, “Why can’t Google make any serious money in Enterprise Search?” Just as he did not have a convincing answer, Google does not have a winning Enterprise case. In fact, not only is the much ballyhooed Googley consumerization of the enterprise NOT happening, corporate decision makers are wondering if Google Enterprise is a joke!

While the two-day enterprise event Gough presented to in May was touted to IT managers as the place to be for “learning strategies and building the skill sets you need to make your organization’s content not only searchable and findable,” consumer search king Google was not the talk, but the joke, of the Enterprise town. Keynote expert insights and blustery IT consultant pitches made Google a target of enterprise derision, an unusual position for “everyone’s favorite garage band” to be in.

From a pointed “I don’t want to be lucky in enterprise search” allusion to the “silly” consumer facing “I’m feeling lucky” button at Google.com, to a Googzilla pastiche of Google’s Sergey & Larry founding duo, Google Enterprise was not accorded the hero’s welcome Google’s YouTube has become accustomed to.

The Google Enterprise keynote was a joke at Interop just two months ago, which even conference producer Lenny Heymann admonished Glotzbach for, on stage, as I recount in Interop: Citrix XenSource Flys as Google Crashes.

The “inspirational” Google Enterprise concluding Glotzbach keynote message: A YouTube worthy home video “clip” of his infant “tech savvy” girl playing with the iPhone, while dissing (Microsoft) smartphones!

Google may be laughing at Microsoft, but the Enterprise is laughing at Google. MORE on why TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business:

Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer

Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway

Schmidt to Ballmer: Stop Stealing MY Office Collaboration Lines!

IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat 

ALSO: Google Has Insomnia: Mrs. Manber Beats 21,300,017 SERP and AdWords! and Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Bill Gates has succeeded wildly in the personal computer mission he set out for himself in 1975 when he began Microsoft Corp. Nevertheless, the richest man in the world, and Microsoft Chairman, must continually defend his vision for the “magic of software,” as he did once again last week, at a “Media Roundtable.”

Gates laments that “no one pays attention to” the business computing market, not even, surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal. Ex-Microsoftie Robert Scoble concurs.

HEY, Bill and Bob, keep it HERE at Insider Chatter! I have been chronicling, reporting and analyzing the big, bad Microsoft vs. Google enterprise and Web services battle, big time. For recent example:

Zoho Beats Microsoft? STILL Only Billions in Office Sales To Go!

Microsoft Office Gets BIG Sales Boost in Live Documents

Microsoft Vista: Are 88 million Computers Really Doomed?

Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer

Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway

Schmidt to Ballmer: Stop Stealing MY Office Collaboration Lines!

Microsoft Office Thunder to Blast Google Apps Cloud

IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat 

Gates on who is seriously “revolutionizing” sofware:

Management software? Security software? Seriously, who do you think? The business computing market, which is way bigger than the consumer computing market, no one pays atention to it. It’s okay, but thank God for business computing, because it allows us to price our consumer computing stuff super cheap, and still pay the salaries of these wonderful researchers who like to be paid.

How much does Microsoft shell out to continue to “revolutionize” software? $7 billion in R & D in 2007.

Google is the one getting all the media love, however, because of its touchy-feely consumer spin, even in the enterprise.

Google is NOT succeeding in its quest for consumerization of the enterprise, though, and a (free) consumer Web services model is ALSO NOT the big market it is cracked up to be. Bil Gates:

Consumer services are basically big, big volume. They’re tiny businesses in a sense, but they’re very important for the population of users that you connect up to.

Gates acknowledged that Microsoft is “playing catch-up in Web search”:

We have categories where we need to match and exceed what a brilliant company has done.

Nevertheless, Gates believes the future of cloud computing is solidly in Microsoft’s favor, despite the brilliance of GOOG:

We think that by the way we’ll connect up to Windows in a rich way, we’ll be able to do something pretty dramatic there, but that awaits the next big wave that comes along.

ALSO: YAY? Weblo Cheapens Facebook ‘Friendship,’ Whales Rejoice! and Edgeio Web 2.0 Bomb: Michael TechCrunch Arrington Cheers $5 million Startup Loss and Henry Blodget Slams eBay’s Whitman: Yahoo’s Yang Next? and Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn About Face (book)

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

In the Google vs. Microsoft war, the key question is NOT “Is Google causing Microsoft to drop its prices.”

The real (not so) head scratcher is WHY doesn’t Google have ANY pricing power itself??? 

When Google turned on the Apps Premier for fee spigot June 1, I mused “so, will Google be busy ringing up $50 credit card charges for the hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions? of prior “free-trial” users of its would be Microsoft Office killer?”

Five months later, the Google Apps for Enterprise “limited time,” “30 day free-trial” offer is going strong, and all Google indications indicate that even at the rock-bottom, Microsoft Office “killing” price of $50 per user, per year, Google software is a tough sell.

I had a first row Javits seat for the Google Enterprise Interop keynote yesterday in New York City in the morning and watched the Google Analyst Day presentations live via video from Mountain View in the afternoon.

Bottom Google Enterprise line? Despite CEO Eric Schmidt’s Wall Street hype of “Search, Ads and Apps,” GOOG is now, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, 99% AdWords pure.

In Interop: Citrix XenSource Flys as Google Crashes yesterday, I reported how Google exec Matthew Glotzbach touted everything Apple in his Google Enterprise keynote before the east coast IT community, much to the chagrin of Interop GM Lenny Heymann. Glotzbach offered not a Google Enterprise word on Postini, the supposed Google $625 million ticket to enterprise credibility, and had no inspiring enterprise case study of how Google Apps premier is enabling the touted Googley “consumerization of the enterprise.”

The Interop Google Enterprise show was a hodgepodge of generic Internet growth stats and trite “innovation” cliches, hailing Steve Jobs and Starbucks, but NOT Google! All Glotzbach could muster for the Google Enterprise case was an end of speech brief mention of an initial ”adopter” of Apps, the non-paying education version that is.

While Google CEO Eric Schmidt rose to his “Executive Panel” occasion by making a heartfelt case for a worldwide movement to embrace the new, much ballyhooed, cloud computing paradigm, such a transition will be a very longtime coming and will likely continue to be a free-to-the-user one, for Google.

Schmidt declined to respond to very speciifc questions regarding the actual take-up of the Google Apps Premiere product versus the no-fee verison, indicating Google ”doesn’t break it out that way.”

Google may not publicy release “sales” figures for Google Apps, but the public “testimonial” accolades it touts for Apps tend to be the same non-paying “customers” over and over, comprising university and small corporate trial installations. Addtionally, Google has long readilly acknowledged that Apps is more attractive for SMBs, rather than the enterprise.

I previewed Google at the Office 2.0 conference last month by analyzing Mountain View’s “Switch to Google Apps” campaign. SEE:  Office 2.0 Enterprise Showdown: Zoho vs. Google Apps vs. Microsoft.

Why not switch to Google Apps, indeed? Schmidt let us in on Google Apps Premiere’s not so dirty little secrets yesterday. Impediments to enterprise adoption of Google Apps:

1) Prospective customers must first learn about the Google SaaS offering and then, 2) Companies must agree to convert operations over to Google Apps.

Schmidt indicated that while it is “easy for brand new entities to embrace Google Apps,” it is much harder for existing entities to make the “switch.” What office productivity application is Google NOT getting businesses to “switch” from? Market leader Microsoft Office.

Google nevertheless seems resigned to not be “killing” Microsoft.

Schmidt believes we are on the cusp of a Web-based computing revolution, which is happening gradually, much as mainstream PC adoption was a slow but steady progression.

What is Google pinning its Apps hopes on then? Building towards a future Googley SaaS cause. After all, the hundreds of thousands of non-paying, but purportedly happy, student users of Apps will soon be making enterprise IT decisions; In favor of Google, Schmidt hopes.

MORE:  IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat and Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway 

PLUS: Google NOT Hot For SILICON ALLEY Technology! and Microsoft Vista: Are 88 million Computers Really Doomed?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN