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Is Google (Apps) the New Microsoft (Office)?
By Mark Evans | February 22, 2007
If mantra number one at Google is “Do No Evil”; then number two has apparently been “We’re Not Going Head to Head with Microsoft”. Google may intend to be a good corporate citizen but there’s no doubt it has Microsoft firmly in its strategic sites after launching Google Apps Premier Edition for the enterprise market. Featuring online e-mail, calendaring, messaging, VoIP, a word processor and a spreadsheet, Google Apps could be an Office-killer.
Of course, there will be plenty of people will be laugh at the idea of a bunch of online services replacing the venerable Office but I look at my own growing adoption of Google services (GMail, Google Reader, Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Blog Search), and I can easily see a time when many businesses will carefully weigh the idea of Google vs. Microsoft. Another fascinating element will be price: Google is offering Apps Premier Edition for $50 per year/year - compared with the $499 that Microsoft wants to charge for Office Professional Edition 2007. Some of Google Apps early adopters include GE & PG.
It would be ludicrous to suggest Google will destroy Office because Office has such a dominate hold on the productivity suite market (anyone still using WordPerfect?) and millions of corporate employees are comfortable with Office. But Google will definitely carve out a healthy amount of market share because unlike Novell and Corel, who weren’t big enough to take on Office when they owned WordPerfect, Google has the financial muscle to go head to head with Microsoft. Google also committed to the online service markets unlike Sun, which used Open Office as strategic toy. This is going to be a fascinating dog fight.
For more, check out GigaOm, which offers up an interesting fact box about Google Apps, including the fact Google can make money by selling it at $50/year, and A View from the Isle, who wonders about relying on a hosted service.
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