Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Who needs Aristotle, Socrates, Plato…when Google offers “Our Philosophy.”  Heck, who needs Moses’ Ten Commandments, as Jeff Jarvis continues his ludicrous public cry to join him in worshipping God Google, really.

Google concurs: “To fully understand Google, it’s helpful to understand all the ways in which the company has helped to redefine how individuals, businesses and technologists view the Internet.” 

On the eve of the New Year, when learned men and women generally reflect on how, as individuals, we can help make the world a better place, Jeff Buzz Machine Jarvis doubles down on his inane campaign to negate thousands of years of spiritual yearning with an ode to a ruthless, $200 billion market cap corporation with the unholy mission of obtaining and controlling all the “information” in the world as its own private, for-profit property, aka Google.

What is REALLY scary, is that Jarvis is undoubtedly evangelizing his personal, one-corporation G worship to the nation’s future journalists as an instructor at the City University of New York, and MY tax dollars are helping fund the irrational, and dangerous, Google exuberance!

How IS Google God? Google has encapsulated all its Googley “ways” in a “Ten Things Google has found to be true” handy cheat sheet.

I repost them below (in italics), along with my Insider Chatter translation (in bold) of how Google is REALLY redefining how individuals, businesses and technologists are impacted by the Internet, Google’s Internet.

1) “Focus on the user and all else will follow”

There is NO escape: We follow the user all over the World Wide Web, and into the cloud.

2) “It’s best to do one thing really, really well”

It’s better to do dozens of things ad hoc, keeping our Googley fingers crossed that some will work out OK.

3) “Fast is better than slow”

We control YOUR data: Caching content owned by everyone else within Google’s server farms keeps US in control.

4) “Democracy on the Web works.”

Here’s the (Back)Rub: Google Democracy is for sale to the highest, non-transparent bidder.

5) “You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer”

We know where you live, work, play…what you think, dream…

6) “You can make money without doing evil”

A little evil is good for the bottom line, a lot of evil makes us GOD.

7) “There’s always more information out there.”

Resistance is futile, we WILL control the world’s information, all of it.

8) “The need for information crosses all borders.”

Who needs the United Nations! YouTube is the only electorate that matters.

9) “You can be serious without a suit”

It won’t be any fun to watch GOOG on the way down, but there is always the free lunch.

10) “Great just isn’t good enough”

Thanks to our Fuzzy Logic, Google is always great! Just Google-It, or ask Jeff Jarvis!

Jarvis’s new found G religion apparently worships dominant corporate market share which crushes all competition, oversized corprorate profit margins garnered at the expense of millions of businesses worldwide and defacto corporate control of the World Wide Web.

Fortunately for the sane Internet world, however, Jarvis’ spiritually misguided G yearnings may soon haunt him. While Jarvis revels in rattling off Google’s mighty corporate dominance stats, keen Wall Street analysts have a keen eye on the one-trick, rich pony that is GOOG.

YouTube may hope to move the elections, but it is NOT moving GOOG. Tech bloggers may swoon over Google Apps, but corporations are shunning it. Google Checkout may succeed in garnering free PR media puff pieces, but Google can’t buy its way to success…

Google Gears, Open Social, Android…so little, so late.

BUT, the biggest, baddest Google problem of all is the GOOG cash machine itself, Google.com. Read all about it in: Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia 

ALSO: 2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and
Browser Flack: Will Google Ever Escape Microsoft Rule? and
There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Lost On Google Maps! What Merry Christmas? and
Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
Google Ignores Hanukkah, Again: Festival of Lights Dark on Homepage and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! 

ALSO: Rich Skrenta: Blekko ‘Absurd’ Search Startup Disses King Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Good riddance Netscape? Blogosphere reaction to AOL’s announcement of the end of the line for its Netscape Browser ranges from fond nostalgia to intense disdain. Lost in the Internet Explorer vs. Firefox vs. Netscape debate, however, is the still browserless Google!

GBrowser anyone? Not according to Googler in Chief Eric Schmidt and friends. BUT WHY NOT?

It is the Google mission to “organize the world’s information,” all of it, in Google’s cloud, a very BIG cloud. The Schmidt holiday wish: 90 percent of all computing shall reside in the cloud, a Google branded one. After all, if Google succeeds in shifting the world’s computing from the PC to the cloud, it will be a “real improvement for people’s lives” because (Microsoft powered) computers are complex and unreliable, so preaches Schmidt.

The very same computers that Google disses, however, power Google’s cloud computing!

Upon Google’s announcement of its purported Microsoft killing Gear’s in May, I was the lone voice underscoring Google’s love hate relationship with the (Microsoft) desktop. I asked, does it gall CEO Schmidt to have to “Microsoft-enable” Google products? OR, does he get personal satisfaction in “using” Microsoft to achieve his Microsoft domination end-game?

“Because the Web is Google’s platform, we are interested in improving it as much as we can,” so declared Bret Taylor, Google Gears evangelist, of the planned “browser extension for creating offline Web applications.” For a user to access ”Google’s platform,” however, he or she generally arrives via Microsoft, desktop and browser.

Schmidt on Gears:

With Google Gears we’re tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud.

The Google platform is dependent upon its biggest competitor’s ”browser,” aka Microsoft Internet Explorer, big time.

MORE: There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and 2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and Rich Skrenta: Blekko ‘Absurd’ Search Startup Disses King Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Zoho continues to rule…the blogosphere!

The latest, greatest Adventnet accomplishment? Zoho Writer supports (some ) offline editing.

The Zoho logo is a familiar one in the blogosphere–Zoho sponsors Techmeme and many individual blogs–and the consistenly glowing blogosphere coverage of every single move Zoho makes is also a standard.

Today’s Zoho product functionality anouncement is given the supra Zoho treatment:

TechCrunch: “While Live Documents Yaps, Zoho Delivers”

GigaOm via Web Worker Daily: “Zoho Seeks to Replace, Not Embrace, Microsoft Office”

Cnet: “Zoho Writer Gets Full Offline Functionality”

WOW? For the Zoho tech blogosphere legions apparently, but a non-event for the marketplace legions of Microsoft Office customers.

Zoho itself acknowledges the incomplete nature of its latest product “update”:

You’ll notice that not all functionalities available online are available in offline mode. This is because some of the functionalities are online specific while others will make their way into the offline mode moving forward.

YAY? NOT for the non-blogging Microsoft masses:

For Zoho Writer to work offline, you’ll need to have Google Gears plug-in installed on your browser (works on Firefox 1.5+, IE 6+).

Microsoft Office beware? My new PC came pre-installed with a free-trial of the Office everyone hopes to “kill,” but NO Google Gears plug-in, or Zoho!

Microsoft banks (literally) on millions of new PC owners dutifully paying their hundreds in Office fees to keep Word, Excel, Powerpoint alive and well…on their hard drives.

Zoho is mainly a FREE online service, striving for offline respectability. Bloggers are happily Web-centric for all their affairs, BUT the security and comfort of a PC-based office computing standard is hard to replace, very hard.

SO, as I wrote in September: Zoho to Beat Microsoft and Google: Only billions in Sales to Go!, still.

ALSO: Zoho at Risk as Yahoo Zimbra Attacks Google Apps and Microsoft Office Gets BIG Sales Boost in Live Documents

PLUS: Zuckerberg Flash: Facebook FREE VPN Is Advertising Supported and Intuit’s New Homestead: Local Advertising Revolution, or Evolution?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Yahoo’s “launch” at TechCrunch40 today was the big yawner it was predicted to be: Yahoo Teachers, a known quantity.

Miichael Arrington did not “break” a Yahoo announcement of a $350 million acquisition of Zimbra at his Palace Hotel shindig, although he is citing “sources” at his blog that it is a done deal.

AND IT IS!

Will Google’s TechCrunch40 “launch” be a yawner as well? OR, will Google finally make good on its Google Apps promises: Gears enabled for offline happiness, a PowerPoint “killer,” JotSpot wiki goodness…?

With Zimbra in the hands of Yahoo, Google can no longer take its sweet Google Apps time. After all, the blogosphere’s favored Web-based productivity apps underdog, Zoho, is already Google Gears enabled!

READ my exculsive interview: Why Google Apps Competitor Zoho is Powered by Google Gears Offline

Zimbra is well on its way to online-offline nirvana, as its value proposition proudly underscores:

Zimbra’s rich AJAX interface is available on or offline to dramatically improve the collaboration experience. Zimbra is available on-premise or on-demand through our extensive hosted partner program.

Zimbra Web Client, Collaboration Suite 4.5:

Web client integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document authoring into a rich browser-based interface. Open source Zimlet technology for custom ‘mash-ups’ in the ZCS web client.

Zimbra Desktop:

Next generation leap forward for Web 2.0 applications, use Zimbra’s Ajax-based collaboration experience online and offline. Out of the office without a connection? (say, in a plane, train, or automobile); Keep working without missing a beat. Write email, add new appointments, edit documents and upon re-connection, changes will be automatically synced to the Zimbra Server.

WHEN WILL GOOGLE APPS START GEARING UP?

ALSO: Powerset Reveals Strategy: Sell Out to Google by 2009 and Zoho at Risk as Yahoo Zimbra Attacks Google Apps

ARE THE TECHCRUNCH40 REALLY THE NEXT BIG THINGS? FOR A REALITY CHECK SEE: Web 3.0: Madison Avenue Money Trumps TechCrunch40 Cool Apps

PLUS: Ning Hardcore Porn Platform: What is Andreessen Doing Wrong? and YAY! Matt Cutts Gets Google Slide Show: Ditch PowerPoint for Presentations?

ALSO: FB Fund: Facebook VCs Divide and Conquer F8 Application Developers

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Nick “Does IT Matter” Carr cites a CapGemini spokesperson on why Google Apps matters in the enterprise, especially the enterprises CapGemini seeks to do business with.

Steve Jones may be a CapGemini “outsourcing exec who oversees the firm’s work with SaaS,” but his pitch for Google Apps is primarlily a Googley one, as presented by Carr:

Google’s package offers two immediate advantages. First, it allows the many thousands of workers who don’t have their own PCs or their own copies of Office - from factory hands to call-center agents - to gain access to email, calendars, and other personal-productivity applications. Up to now, licensing and data-storage costs have prohibited these “disenfranchised employees” from being given access to Office-style apps. Because Google charges only $50 a year per user for Apps and stores all email messages and other data in its own systems, it lowers the cost barrier substantially.

Second, Google Apps simplifies collaboration, particularly between employees working at different companies. With Office and other traditional apps, such collaboration usually entails “lobbing emails over the firewall” with attached files. Such “paper-shuffling” leads to a proliferation of different versions of documents, adding complexity and delays to the process. With Apps, a single version of a document is maintained by Google, and people from different companies can work on it simultaneously. That, can greatly speed up the work of inter-company teams.

Jones has apparently been brushing up on the Google Apps enterprise sales pitch:

EMAIL AND CALENDAR FOR DESKLESS WORKERS

Enterprises in industries like services, hospitality, manufacturing and retail have traditionally been unable to provide all their employees with the most basic messaging and calendaring tools that employees at headquarters take for granted.

Analysts estimate that up to 45% of employees do not have a company-provided email address. While some of the benefits of providing company-wide email might be obvious (like reduced paperwork and improved communications), other benefits of providing email to every single employee include improved employee morale, and reduction of the digital divide that for years has separated office workers from deskless employees.

ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION WITH GOOGLE DOCS AND SPREADHSEETS

Web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that makes collaboration more efficient. It lets you keep a document online that others in your organization can edit and update simultaneously right from their browsers, so you don’t need to keep track of attachments and who has the latest version of a file. Multiple people can make changes at once, and see other people’s edits as they happen in real-time. And each revision is automatically saved for you, so you can see who changed what, when, and revert to an older version at any point.

It’s easy to get files into and out of Docs & Spreadsheets. To start from an existing file saved on your computer, simply upload the document and pick up where you left off. To work on documents offline or distribute them as attachments, simply save a copy of a Docs & Spreadsheets file to your computer in the format that works best for you.

YAY! For Google Apps in the enterprise? NO! CapGemini has yet to produce an in-house Google Apps testimonial!

Google Apps is now one year old, Google Enterprise Search, however, is a Googleplex “old timer.” Nevertheless, GOOG continues to be 99% AdWords pure!

No matter how much Google wants it, betting on a a Googley consumerization of the enterprise is not a winning hand, as I discuss in Office 2.0: Zoho Business and Google Apps FAIL to Dazzle

ALSO: Microsoft Works 9 Frenzy Overblown: What ‘Free, Ad Supported’ Really Means
and Google Apps Packs It Up: StarOffice On Microsoft Desktop Rules
and Hey Google: When Can Matt Cutts Ditch Microsoft PowerPoint?
and OpenProj Unleashed: Projity SaaS Microsoft Office Project ‘Direct Hit’

PLUS: Twitter VMA Power or MTV Crossover Dreams?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Office 2.0 Enterprise Showdown: Zoho vs. Google Apps vs. Microsoft, I wrote Wednesday, projecting big Web Office announcements from both Zoho AND Google Apps this week.

As the Office 2.0 Conference draws closer, the speculation intensifies: Google Wiki, now on the Google Apps table, thanks to the JotSpot acqusition.

In June, I underscored, “Google Gets Zenter: Where is JotSpot?” After all, the Jot Spot team is nearing its one year anniversary as Googlers, but JotSpot is still showing its same spots, at jotspot.com.

Why is Google so SLOW to integrate its software application acquisitions? How many rocket scientists does it take to make JotSpot Googley?

Ten months and counting for a JotSpot to Google Apps migration IS slow for the Googleplex, given CEO Eric Schmidt’s repeated assertions that the unprecendented “blizzard” of Google new product launches, while “confusing for almost everyone, seems to create new opportunities for us every day”:

“The new products are coming at a fast and furious rate,” Schmidt is fond of noting.

Not always: Google Gears, for example? Google Apps direct competitor Zoho has beaten Google to the Web Office offline punch. READ my exclusive interview: Why Google Apps Competitor Zoho is Powered by Google Gears Offline

WHAT TO EXPECT AT THE OFFICE 2. CONFERENCE TO START THE FALL WITH A COMPETITIVE BANG? READ Office 2.0 Enterprise Showdown: Zoho vs. Google Apps vs. Microsoft

PLUS: OpenProj Unleashed: Projity SaaS Microsoft Office Project ‘Direct Hit’ 

AND:Dopplr Jetsetter Club: Who Needs Facebook? NO! Apple iPod Beware and Got a Tech Startup? Google is NO Angel

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN