As soon as Google made the announcement about its enhanced Google Apps offering, the phrase “Microsoft Office killer” started being bandied about.
However, I think the rumors of Microsoft Office’s demise at the hands of Google are greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain.
Google Apps is an online offering consisting of word processing, spreadsheet, email and other goodies. Google Apps is viewed as competing with Microsoft’s desktop Office suite (Word, Excel, Outlook).
As excellent as Google is with search, it’s just not realistic to think it can supplant Microsoft’s position in the desktop. Even if Google’s Apps offering were at the functional level of Office (it’s not), Microsoft has 450 million Office users worldwide — that many users are not switching to anything very fast.
Last week Brent Leary, Host of Business Technology Radio, invited me to talk about this topic in a short guest stint.
Go here to listen to the segment where I and some others weigh in on the Google versus Microsoft topic. (Our comments are contained in a show featuring Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance.com, talking about online outsourcing.)
Agreed. I love Google and Gmail, and their applications are probably great for the web, but when practically all my life I’ve created documents using Microsoft Office programs, I won’t be quick to switch to something new… especially if that involves having to convert my existing files.
Solo Business Marketing
I admit that I appreciate all of the options created to run our businesses efficiently.
Hopefully, Google will provide us with case studies which show the benefit of considering their product suite. Without it, they will swim upstream for quite a long time.
I think anything like Google apps is ages (many months maybe years) away from competing with Office etc.
Web apps are great. We all use a few but they can be sluggish and depend on the quality of the browser.
However what a great (cheap and easy way without the need for a great budget or IT department) to share information.
An array of useful company information (but maybe not sensitive information) and be put in a single place and shared between employees and mabe customers.
Home working without the need for magic (to none nerds) way of contecting to the company network… which you don’t have.
wilson ng
Hi,
from the viewpoint of Microsoft, Google is currently their greatest threat other than the open source.
Microsoft has always shown that it thrives best in the face of competition, and because of that, the consumer benefits.
I am sure we are all better off because these people try their best to woo us.
Grant
I love the fact that there are several big players out there working hard for our attention. This is a healthy marketplace.