Google takes a swipe at Microsoft March 4, 2007
Posted by Vijay in Business, Google, Internet, Microsoft, Trends.trackback
Google has announced Google Apps for your domain that will include Mail, IM, Calendar AND office productivity tools. The service costs $50 per year.
I have always been a big fan of hosted application services especially for productivity tools like email. Beats installing it on your in-house servers and hiring people to manage them.
Microsoft has started changing its licensing policy as well. Whether its in anticipation of competition from companies like Google and Zoho or whether they realize that market dynamics are changing, it augurs well for the end user.
Business Buzz 
Hosted apps are allways hated by me even though they are the best product models an economy would need.
a) Data security. 98% of the firms I deal with do not want to host data inside a third party network or physical infrastucture
b) Customization beyond recognition. Business needs allways work at cross roads for each customer of the same product line
c) Allready existing network, systems to host the software and maintain is a 100 watt bulb idea why it should not be hosted
d) Sucking speeds of net and the formidable fear of I want it now but the link is dead story.
Mohan: Those perceptions will slowly change..technologies for customization are becoming available.. even in India net infrastructure is improving as are net speeds…
The jury is still out..
Vijay 🙂
Try telling citibank that your data is safe on my datacentre so you can outsource … none of the banking domain can have the data outside their domain and most central banks enforce this. So this rules out the entire finance and insurance domain.
Wire getting better in india is true… but thats one small pain point.
Mohan: People like Citibank etc are NOT the indended targets for this at all. Google is going after the “long tail”.. small businesses and offices for whom cost is the main issue. If you look at the long tail (as google did in its Adsense service) they are much much bigger than the large corporates.
SoHo experiment?
Isnt all freeware free but service costly? 🙂 Everybody have stomachs to feed!
Are these kept in DMZ area ? Good deal …!
Mohan: Google Apps is not freeware.. is $50 a month and comes with an SLA…
VIjay: Oops OK.